Ultrasonic Blind Stick for Completely Blind People to Avoid Any Kind of Obstacles

Abstract

The ability to live without being controlled by any action, judgment and any outside factors including any opinions and regulations is defined by the term Independent. But in reality physical movement for travelling or simply walking through a crowded street pose great challenge for a visually impaired person. Also they must learn every detail about the home environment such as placement of tables; chairs etc. to prevent injury. Because of this disability they have to sacrifice their independence in daily living by depending on the sighted people in every busy place like bus, footpaths, railway stations etc. This paper aims to design an artificial navigating system with adjustable sensitivity with the help of ultrasonic proximity sensor to assist these blind persons to walk fearlessly and independently in both indoor and outdoor environment. This system can detect any type of upcoming obstacles and potholes using the reflection properties of ultrasound. Attachment of the system to different body areas makes its utilization more versatile and reliable.

Tools and Technologies for Blind and Visually Impaired Navigation Support: A Review

“…The systems proposed using this technology works in conjunction with some electronic boards like Raspberry Pie or Arduino [64]. An ultrasonic blind stick with adjustable sensitivity with the help of an ultrasonic proximity sensor and a GPS module was reported in [65].…”

Assistive cane for visually impaired persons for uneven surface detection with orientation restraint sensing

“…In similar work by Arnesh Sen et al (2018), the idea of attaching the sensors to the body of the user makes it less ergonomic and also not much acceptable by the user in practical conditions. In comparison, we have attached the sensors to the cane itself, which the VI persons already use for their travel purposes.…”

“…Further, the performance of our system in comparison to the white cane is explored with the help of a score-based matrix discussed in Section 6. The results obtained with our proposed system is also compared with the state of the art results obtained by Sen et al (2018), Bhatlawande et al (2014) and Patil et al (2018).…”

“…Three other works are of particular interest because they will be referred later to draw comparative analysis with our work are reviewed now. In the work by Arnesh Sen et al (2018), three ultrasonic sensors are attached to the chest, knee and toe of the user to assess the obstacle in front of the user. In another work by Shripad Bhatlawande et al (2014), six ultra-sonic sensors are attached to the walking cane to assess the obstacle heights.…”

Modified KNN-LVQ for Stairs Down Detection Based on Digital Image

“…The research by Arnesh Sen Kaustav Sen Jayoti Das has developed a system to avoid an obstacle by using ultrasonic sensors. The ultrasonic sensors are paired up on the chest, knee, and toe [1]. However, that technique has limitations, where the sensor cannot detect objects that cannot be touched, such as stairs down.…”