Intelligent companion for blind: Smart stick

Abstract

Blindness is a state of lacking the visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors. According to World Health Organization, approximately 1.3 billion people live with some form of visual impairment with 36 million people being completely blind. These people face great difficulty in independent and safe mobility. Almost 89% of such people live in low and middle income countries, and are unable to afford existing mobility aid devices. Addressing these difficulties, the proposed research aims to design a low-cost and user-friendly guidance system “Smart Stick” which serves as an Electronic travel Aid and as a Position Locator Device. It helps to improve the mobility of both blind and visually impaired people, enabling them to navigate safely by avoiding any obstacles that may encounter and providing facility to communicate its current location to any of his/her relative. This device is tested under natural environmental conditions, and has performed excellent under low and high light environments too. The proposed design achieves reduction in cost by 44% in comparison to existing devices.