I think computer vision is a combination between image processing and decision-making techniques (Artificial intelligence).

Voice activation area is widely used nowadays to activate most functions of your interface to process images. I used this technique in part of my work and it was really powerful. I mixed it with text-to-speech technique also to help not-looking or impaired people be aware of any activated function by voice.

Text to speech, ASL to speech, image to speech............like you can work to any level. Where as it will depend on the need and applications.............

Near infrared depth sensing (via Primesense/MS Kinect cameras) is increasingly being used to assist visually impaired individuals via smart homes, devices and control equipment. Embedded/advanced computer vision algorithms in these devices make it possible to utilize point cloud libraries (PCL) or statistical heuristics including HMMs/CRFs in time-series-based pattern recognition domain. The underlying Kinect/OpenNI SDKs can integrate with Matlab. Potential applications include gesture recognition, obstacle avoidance, face detection-based audio/visual appliances and energy conservation projects in smart homes for the disabled and care home residents.

I will list research areas to further clarify:

1. 3D face and emotion recognition

2. Behavioral and activity recognition

3. Remote (indoor) human presence detection and activity logging

4. Heart rate monitoring based on (presumably) face expressions and texture profiling (Note: this option is NOT available in recent Kinect/PrimeSense devices but is expected to appear in future expected releases)

Hope this all help!!!

Brain controller. In some places, research is taking place in this direction. The nessages sent by brain are decoded and they are used for action processing.

The next area is the use of motion sensor and heat sensors for checking the obstacles and alerting the person to make moves.

We work on the field of cultural heritage and in particular on 2d to 3d translation of painting (from painting to bas reliefs) for visually impaired people. We nave some publications if you see my profile and we are interested in moving forward our project. Best.

Any research paper available on this

In the paper below we used Matlab for a work dealing with visually impaired people:

Carfagni, M., Furferi, R., Governi, L., Volpe, Y., Tennirelli, G.

Tactile representation of paintings: An early assessment of possible computer based strategies

(2012) Lecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics), 7616 LNCS, pp. 261-270.