Design of smart stick for visually impaired people using Arduino

Abstract

Nowadays, blind or impaired people are facing a lot of problems in their daily life since it is not easy for them to move, which is very dangerous. There are about 37 million visually impaired people across the globe according to the World Health Organization. People with these problems mostly depend on others, for example, a friend, or their trained dog while movıng outside. Thus, we were motivated to develop a smart stick to solve this problem. The smart stick, integrated with an ultrasonic sensor, buzzer and vibrator, can detect obstacles in the path of the blind people. The buzzer and vibration motor are activated when any obstacle is detected to alert the blind person. This work proposes a low-cost ultrasonic smart blind stick for blind people so that they can move from one place to another in an easy, safe and independent manner. The system was designed and programmed using C language. Keywords: Arduino Uno, Arduino IDE, ultrasonic sensor, buzzer, motor.