An Intelligent Walking Stick for the Blind in Indoor Environment

—This paper presents the smart walking stick based on ultrasonic sensors and Arduino for visually impaired people. There are approximately 37 million people across the globe who are blind according to the World Health Organization. People with visual disabilities are often dependent on external assistance which can be provided by humans, trained dogs, or special electronic devices as support systems for decision making. Thus, we were motivated to develop a smart white cane to overcome these limitations. We accomplished this goal by adding ultrasonic sensors at specific positions to the cane that provided information about the environment to the user by activating the buzzer sound. We proposed low cost and light weight system designed with microcontroller that processes signal and alerts the visually impaired person over any obstacle, water or dark areas through beeping sounds. The system consists of obstacle and moisture detection sensors for receiving, processing and sending signals to the alarm system which finally alerts the user for prompt action. The system was designed, programmed using C language and tested for accuracy and checked by the visually impaired person. Our device can detect obstacles within the distance of about 2m from the user. Keyword-Ultrasonic sensor, Arduino ATmega328 Microcontroller, Mobility aid, Visually Impaired Person, Alarm system I. INTRODUCTION Visually impaired people are the people who finds it difficult to recognize the smallest detail with healthy eyes. Those who have the visual acuteness of 6/60 or the horizontal range of the visual field with both eyes open have less than or equal to 20 degrees. These people are regarded as blind. A survey by WHO (World Health Organization) carried out in 2011 estimates that in the world, about 1% of the human population is visually impaired (about 70 million people) and amongst them, about 10% are fully blind (about 7 million people) and 90% (about 63 million people) with low vision according to [1]. The main problem with blind people is how to navigate their way to wherever they want to go. Such people need assistance from others with good eyesight. As described by WHO, 10% of the visually impaired have no functional eyesight at all to help them move around without assistance and safely. The figure 1 below is a chart showing the percent of blind people across the globe. This study proposes a new technique for designing a smart stick to help visually impaired people that will provide them navigation. The conventional and archaic navigation aids for persons with visual impairments are the walking cane (also called white cane or stick) and guide dogs which are characterized by a many imperfections. The most critical shortcomings of these aids include: essential skills and training phase, range of motion, and very insignificant information communicated been communicated. Our approach modified this cane with some electronics components and sensors, the electronic aiding devices are designed to solve such issues. The ultrasonic sensors, water sensor, buzzer, and RF transmitter/Receiver are used to record information about the presence of obstacles on the road. Ultrasonic sensor have the capacity to detect any obstacle within the distance range of 2cm-450cm. Therefore whenever there is an obstacle in this range it will alert the user. Water sensor is used to detect if there is water in path of the user. Most blind guidance systems use ultrasound because of its immunity to the environmental noise. With the rapid advances of modern technology both in hardware and software it has become easier to provide intelligent navigation system to the visually impaired.

International Journal for Research in Applied Science & Engineering Technology (IJRASET), 2022

The "Smart Wearable Guiding Device for the Visually Impaired People" is designed to help blind individuals overcome their lack of vision by using other senses like sound and touch. It alerts the blind user of a major hurdle via audio and vibrating signals. According to the World Health Organization, 39 million individuals globally are considered to be blind. They have a lot of difficulties in their everyday routines. As a result, the project's goal is to provide a low-cost, highefficiency method of assisting the visually handicapped in navigating with a little more ease, quickness, and assurance. This Arduino based gadget will assist the blind in navigating without the use of a stick, which might be inconvenient for them. They may just wear it as a wristband or fabric, and it will work quite precisely with little to no practice. A ringer is also included in the system, which emits a warning sound and generates vibration signals. The system uses sound and vibration signals to warn the user about impending dangers. The frequency of both sound and vibration signals increases as the range between elastic glove and obstacles decreases. The design incorporates a buzzer that emits an audible alarm and a motor that produces vibration signals, as well as the ability to transmit notifications to the appropriate person in the event of a crisis. As a result, the study objective is to provide a low-cost, high-efficiency method of assisting blind people to travel with more ease, pace, and assurance. This design provides a low-cost, robust, portable solution for routes with a self-evidently quick reaction time.

This paper presents a simple concept and design for a travel aid for the visually impaired. The proposed device uses ultrasonic signal in sensing and detecting an object (obstacles). The aid can inform the user about the distance of the detected obstacles by means of tactile vibrations. A prototype device called the intelligent walking stick (INSTICK) was developed under this concept. The INSTICK involves four main portions, ultrasonic transmitters, ultrasonic receiver, control unit and the output portions that consists of a vibrator motor and a speech synthesizer unit. Concept of radio detection is being employed here to receive the returned echo of ultrasonic signals reflected by the obstacles. The echo travel time is used to determine the distance from the user to the obstacle. A PIC microcontroller is used to control the transceiver and process the received signal to an audible format through speech synthesizer. A few tests and survey were carried out involving visually impaired and despite some limitations satisfactory results were observed.

Basically it is difficult for blind people pass their day to day life with their disabilities. Blindness is a condition of lacking the visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors partially or fully. Blindness hinders the ability of a person to walk on his own as it can be very dangerous. Mobility aids like walking sticks and guide dogs are used by blinds depending on their affordability. In this system we interfaced some smart functions with their stick. The obstacle along their way is detected through ultrasonic sensor placed on the stick; Camera gets triggered to capture the object which is on the way. The captured image is sent to cloud to identify the type of the object and then it is converted to text and is intimated as voice command through speaker or via earphones connected with Raspberry pi. So that blind can be able to identify the object in-front of them. Additionally, by interfacing GPS with the system, with the help of Google maps, the system will automatically detect the live location in terms of latitude and longitude and the location can be shared to the caretaker via email. Also through camera, the writings on the board can be captured, read and converted to text through Tesseract and the text is vocally received to the person with the help of connected earphones. . RF ID is used to find the stick using tags. The buzzer goes ON to identify the location of the stick. When the distance is less than the threshold value (15cm), the buzzer goes ON.

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2018

In this paper, we introduce a smart stick system for assisting blind people. The smart stick comes as a proposed solution to enable visually impaired people to find difficulties in detecting obstacles and dangers in front of them during walking and to identify the world around. The system is designed to act like an artificial vision and alarm unit.The system consists of five components: ultrasonic sensor, Vibrator motor, water sensor, light (LDR) sensor, microcontroller (Arduino Uno R3) to receive the sensor signals and process them to short pulses to the Arduino pins where buzzers, vibrator and voice alarms are connected. GPS navigation in the Mobile can be used to guide the blind for new places and unfamiliar places. We seek in our project to provide a smart stick affordable and suitable for most blind people, and also it is light in weight. It can be made available to all segments of the society and their families who need them..

IRJET, 2021

Traditionally, visually impaired persons used a stick to see if there were any impediments in their path. This method is inefficient in many ways, and the person who uses it has to deal with a variety of issues. This research aimed to improve mobility for a blind person by developing an obstacledetecting walking stick with sound play with ultrasonic sensors. Both hardware and software were used in the project. Ultrasonic sensor, buzzers, a vibrator sensor, and a microcontroller make up the hardware, while Arduino Integrated Development Environment (Arduino IDE) was utilised to programme the Arduino uno in the software. The hardware components were housed in a Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) casing. The ultrasonic obstacle detector was set to identify objects at a distance of 100 cm or less and sound the buzzer to inform the blind person. The vibrator sensor also vibrates the stick to assist the blind. This stick was used to detect barriers in a room with various objects placed in various positions by blindfolded participants. When comparing the produced ultrasonic walking stick to a standard white cane, the results revealed a 90% reduction in collision rate. This demonstrates that the ultrasonic walking stick is safe for a blind person to use at home.

In this world everyone is in a race of achieving success, so for the betterment and welfare of blind persons, many gadgets are invented, similarly our paper also describe a gadget which will improve the navigation of the person and will help in walking safely on the roads, by making him aware of the obstacle ahead in his path. And this would help such person to cope up with other. The paper describes a stick which is integrated with ultrasonic sensor and water sensors. The ultrasonic sensors detect obstacle ahead using ultrasonic waves and passes this data to microcontroller. The microcontroller then processes this data and calculates if the obstacle is close enough or not. And if it is close then it aware him via headphone giving him the knowledge of distance. It also senses pot holes filled with water and alerts the user by a different buzzer, making him aware that there is water in his path ahead. And it has the ability of detecting the live wire in the path. The system has one more advanced feature integrated to help the blind find their stick if they forget where they kept it. A wireless RF based remote is used for this purpose. Pressing the remote button sounds a buzzer on the stick which helps the blind person to find their stick. Thus, this system allows for obstacle detection as well as finding stick if misplaced by visually disabled people.

Visual impairment is a complex challenge that affects people of all ages, and it is estimated that around 2.2 billion people worldwide lack adequate access to medical treatment and support. In Latin America, there is a lack of attention to people with visual disabilities, evidenced by poor urban infrastructure and lack of compliance with inclusion laws. Some projects stand out for the use of prototypes with artificial vision technology, global positioning system (GPS) and smart canes. Therefore, the objective of the project is to use ultrasonic sensors and a low-cost electronic device coupled to canes, for obstacle detection and mobility using an open hardware embedded system. The results confirmed the efficiency in the detection and operation of the ultrasonic sensor by activating the light emitting diode (LED), the buzzer and the vibrating motor according to the programmed distances. Challenges were identified, such as adapting the sensor to the tilt of the cane and the importance of accurate calibration of the ultrasonic sensor. The system met its objectives by detecting objects in a range of 2 to 50 cm and providing sound alerts to improve the perception of blind people.

Cuadernos de Economía (Forthcoming), 2024

The purpose of this essay is to identify some of the new economic challenges faced by left-wing forces in Latin America, and specially in countries endowed with natural resources. We propose a set of progressive policy responses that prevent the regional left from falling into the missteps marked by the policy agenda followed by the so-called Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela. We highlight the need to build an alternative based on what we call "progressive democratic development." Our fundamental message is that the democratic left has to overcome the misleading dichotomy that indicates that society is organized by the power of the state or the market. Instead it must give prominence to civil society. Several ideas are raised about how to give prominence to civil society and how to work for it and poorest segment of the population, and we do so in the particular context of economies rich in natural resources. The essay explores new formulas to manage mining and oil wealth, to provide a social protection system to the growing informal sector and to manage macroeconomic policy in a socially responsible manner.

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