SheHacks+ Finalist Project 🏆
An indoor navigation assistant providing real-time, voice-guided spatial routing for the visually impaired.
GPS has changed the world for the sighted, but for the visually impaired, the world often stops at the front door of a building. What does it feel like to be in an unfamiliar building during a fire alarm, not knowing where the exits or obstacles are?
For over 2.2 billion people worldwide living with visual impairments, this uncertainty is daily life.
GuideMate challenges how we think about accessibility, safety, and independence in everyday spaces. It is a web-based indoor navigation assistant that adapts dynamically as the user moves through a space. Instead of relying on static solutions like Braille signage or tactile flooring, GuideMate provides continuous, step-by-step audio guidance and obstacle detection in real time.
- Real-Time Voice Interaction: Users can ask natural language questions like "Where is the nearest exit?" and receive immediate, clear audio directions.
- Dynamic Obstacle Detection: Continuously scans the environment to warn users of physical obstacles in their path as they move.
- Hardware-Agnostic Accessibility: Built entirely as a web application. No bulky, specialized hardware is required—just a smartphone or standard device.
- Low-Latency Processing: Deployed on the edge to ensure the fast response times required for safe spatial navigation.
- Frontend & Core Logic: TypeScript
- Computer Vision: COCO-SSD (Real-time object detection)
- Spatial Mapping: LiDAR integration for depth and environmental landmarks
- Voice AI: ElevenLabs (Speech-to-Speech and Text-to-Speech)
- Deployment & Hosting: Cloudflare (Edge computing for lightweight, fast execution)
- Node.js (v18 or higher)
- npm or yarn
- ElevenLabs API Key
- Clone the repository:
git clone [https://github.com/lgomezvi/GuideMate.git](https://github.com/lgomezvi/GuideMate.git) cd GuideMate
