Smart Cane for Assisting Visually Impaired People

Abstract

Blindness disables a person from self-navigating outside well-known environments. It affects their ability to perform several jobs, duties, and activities. They are dependent on external assistance which can be provided by humans, dogs or special electronic devices for better decision making. This motivated us to create a prototype called 'Smart cane for assisting visually impaired people' to overcome the problems they face in their daily life. Our device is a low cost and lightweight system that processes signals and alerts the visually impaired over any obstacle, potholes or water puddles through different beeping patterns. It senses the light intensity of the environment and illuminates the LED accordingly. These are accomplished by incorporating two ultrasonic sensors, a moisture sensor and a LDR sensor along with an Arduino Nano micro-controller. These are placed at specific positions of the cane for efficient guidance. Moreover, a GSM module is also added to the system so that the visually impaired person can send a message to the emergency contact number in case of distress. The developed model showed 89 percent accuracy and 80 percent of the users were satisfied with the developed prototype. � 2019 IEEE.