João Guerreiro, LASIGE integrated member, has successfully obtained funding for his NavXR project, through the FCT’s PEX exploratory call. The project officially kicked off this month!

Navigation remains a significant challenge for blind people, particularly in unfamiliar indoor environments. While many research efforts have explored indoor navigation, most solutions depend on heavy, costly infrastructure and ongoing maintenance. This lack of scalability has prevented widespread adoption.

NavXR proposes a new direction by connecting the physical and digital worlds to support blind people navigating indoor spaces. Using only off-the-shelf smartphones, the project will enable mapping, localization, and real-time assistance without external infrastructure. NavXR explores two complementary paths: augmenting physical spaces with virtual elements to provide dynamic support, and creating a navigable virtual replica of real environments. This bidirectional link will allow users to explore spaces in advance and add virtual annotations that enhance real-world navigation.

The project is carried out in collaboration with researchers from the University of Milan, Dragan Ahmetovic and Sergio Mascetti, bringing together expertise in HCI and accessibility, blind navigation and AR-based localization, and Virtual Reality.