Draft:NaviLens

NaviLens is a color box code intended to help blind and visually impaired people find their way around railway and subway stations, museums, libraries, and other public spaces.

The color box code, a tag reminiscent of a simplified QR code, is read by an app on the smartphone, and then provides the necessary information about the tag itself (distance, angle) and about the target to be reached. This could be anything from public transportation schedules to the obstacles they need to know, or physical descriptions of the environment. Users can also download regular tags and customize them to label food boxes or personal documents, for example.

The application uses visual algorithms, which can also interpret the tag at a certain distance, or when the color code is not very sharp.

Navilens was developed by the Laboratorio de Investigación en Visión Móvil at the University of Alicante, in collaboration with the Spanish startup NaviLens.

Navilens is proprietary software ; intellectual property and licensing rights follow Spanish law, and are held by NaviLens' parent company Neosistec. When using the app, location data and serial number of the smartphone are recorded. Domestic use in the private sphere is permitted and free of charge.

Kellogs has partnered with the company and put codes on several of their products.

Examples

 * Public transport in Barcelona
 * New-York subway stations, including the Jay Street-MetroTech subway station
 * Some Belgian railway stations
 * VIA Metropolitan Transit