A Research on Smart Stick for the Blind

시각 장애인을 위한 스마트 지팡이에 관한 연구

Unfortunately, the number of blind people increases every 5 seconds in our world. An extensive research was made on improving the conventional walking cane and developing a microcontroller based walking stick for the blind with sensors and a feedback in form of vibration. Two different kinds of sensors are used to detect obstacles, ultrasonic and infrared distance sensors. The signal from an ultrasonic sensor is fed to a microcontroller. With the help of the supporting software, the Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) principle is extensively used to form three zones and run the corresponding vibration motor at different spends according to how far the detected object is located. The other infrared distance sensors are connected to amplifiers and after that to their corresponding vibration motors through motor drivers. The vibration motors are to be located around the user's arm to notify the blind of the obstacles in the intended walking way. It can be very reliable and sufficient device guiding the blind other than the conventional walking cane which has many drawbacks which will be explained and discussed.