Development of guiding walking support device for visually impaired people with the GPS

Abstract

Nowadays, when many of the visually impaired people go out, they are using white cane or a guide dog. However, these walking support tools must often rely on the user’s senses and free life of the visually impaired people are not yet guaranteed completely. Therefore, in recent years, the development of the walking support device with electronics have been actively carried out. But it is not popular yet in general. One of the reasons is that navigation type walking support device is likely to be heavy equipment, hence the visually impaired people don’t use them with ease. For such reason, we conducted development and experiment of the walking support device that enable that they go out with ease by being equipped with sensors to detect obstacles and omni-wheels and navigate them in this study. This device unites the advantages of both electronic white cane and guide dog robot.