Embedded Assistive Cane for Visually Impaired Persons

The second leading cause of death in the elderly and severe injury for the visually impaired is due to falls. Many studies, reveals that the usage of conventional assistive cane devices is critical in reducing the risk of falls. The conventional aids exhibit serious adverse effects that contribute to falls, even though it provides physical support as well as supplementary sensing feedback to patients. The visually impaired people mostly use white cane or guide dogs to provide directions while walking. In order to enhance the features of existing white cane, a smart assisting cane is designed to achieve the goals of obstacle avoidance and fall detection efficiently. The existing smart cane informs the user whether the obstacle is present or not, but the user have no idea about what type of obstacle it is. Thus, in this work, a system which detects elevated and depressed surface and aids the user while approaching a staircase is designed. This system also detects overhead or hanging obstacles. In addition to that to prevent fall, a moisture sensor is placed at the end of the stick to detect slippery surfaces and an additional ultrasonic sensor is placed for identifying pit. These sensors are interfaced with Arduino. Elevated surface and drop off surfaces are also detected by comparing the difference in delay of signals from the two sensors. The main objective of this work is to design a smart cane which helps the blind user to get aware of what type of obstacle he/she is approaching and alerting them with voice output. The systems also gives alerts the user’s relative position by sending the location of the user in case of any abnormal or emergency situations