A Simple and Effective Electronic Stick to Detect Obstacles for Visually Impaired People through Sensor Technology

Abstract

The visually impaired people (VIP) are always depends on traditional walking stick or trained dogs or human beings to travel from one place to another place. The existing microcontroller-based sticks are used for only detecting obstacles and not able to detect the water and light environment in the user’s path and they are expensive. Most of the existing electronic sticks are wearable devices and the VIPs are not comfortable to wear and walk. The proposed smart cane is able to detect the obstacles, water and light environment in left, right and in front of the user. The smart cane is constructed through Arduino Mega 2560 Microcontroller with Arduino C compiler, Ultrasonic Sensors, Light Sensor and Soil Moisture Sensor. The VIP smart cane can generate an audio feedback signal to the user if any obstacle or water or light environment is present in their walking path. The VIPs are felt comfortable to use the smart cane because it is very familiar like a traditional stick and the cost is also affordable for rural area people of India. The detection algorithms used in this paper are very simple and efficient for detecting the obstacles, water and light environment of the user’s path. Thus, with the help of proposed smart cane the user can able to easily travel independently from source to destination.