AIoT-Based Smart Stick for Visually Impaired Person

Abstract

Visually impaired people are facing difficulties during day-to-day activities in terms of traveling and receiving accurate information from their surroundings. Most of the time, visually impaired persons need to rely on others. Blind people cannot walk without the support of a cane. Artificial intelligence of things (AIoT) is the solution to designing smart devices for the visually impaired. We propose a smart stick that overcomes most of the problems of the visually impaired person. The stick actually helps to detect the obstacles faced in day-to-day life. The visually impaired person can also recognize objects and currency with the help of a deep learning algorithm applied to images captured by the camera installed in the stick. The pulse sensor installed on the stick monitors the health of the user. The smart stick is embedded with Raspberry pi and a global positioning system (GPS) that helps in sensing emergency alerts. The proposed smart stick also provides timing information about available buses near the location to enable choosing travel times in advance. Sensors are used for achieving these functions. Android application that is connected with firebase is also developed for tracking data about the user (health, location, etc.) from a remote location. The Overall obstacle detection accuracy of the system is 91.7% for various demonstrations and the single module will be available at around <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\$ $ </tex-math></inline-formula> 50– <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\$ $ </tex-math></inline-formula> 60. The proposed system is cost-effective, lightweight and user-friendly. The main goal of this system is to ensure the safety of visually impaired persons and to provide a better life for them.