Mobility assistance device and method of providing mobility assistance

Abstract

Disclosed is a mobility assistance device and method of providing mobility assistance to a user. The device comprises a housing, a sensor arrangement, a tracking means for tracking a position and an orientation of the device, a processing arrangement configured to receive an input relating to a destination of a user of the device, receive the information relating to the environment from the sensor arrangement, compute a three-dimensional model of the environment based on information relating to the environment from the sensor arrangement, receive a current position and a current orientation of the device from the tracking means, determine an optimal route for reaching the destination starting from the current position of the device and compute a sequence of navigational commands for the optimal route, and a force feedback means configured to execute one or more actions to communicate the navigational commands to the user, wherein the one or more actions assist the user in traversing the optimal route. Specifically, the optimal route is determined by a sequence of navigational commands, wherein the navigational command is determined as a combination of directional commands relating to the optimal route, and commands specific to a current environment of the device, and wherein the directional commands are determined using a conventional satellite navigation system, and wherein the mobility assistance device is a handheld device.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.