Touvigation: Embodied Adaptive Object Acquisition for Blind and Low-Vision Users in Unfamiliar Indoor Environments

Abstract

Blind and low-vision users often face challenges when locating and physically acquiring objects in unfamiliar indoor environments. Existing vision-language-model-based assistants can provide semantic descriptions but may introduce latency, hallucinations, and guidance that is poorly aligned with embodied action. We present Touvigation, a hands-free object acquisition system that combines vision-language understanding with persistent local spatial modeling to provide low-latency, body-relative guidance. Drawing on formative interviews with eight blind and low-vision participants, we design a multi-stage guidance framework that adapts spatial references as users transition from orienting, to walking, to reaching and tactile verification. We evaluated Touvigation with 12 blind and low-vision participants against a multimodal large-language-model assistant and unassisted search. Touvigation achieved 100% task success, compared with 58% for the multimodal assistant and 85% for unassisted search, while reducing completion time and cognitive workload. Our findings demonstrate how persistent spatial grounding and adaptive embodied guidance can improve object acquisition for blind and low-vision users.