Smart cane for visually impaired people with obstacle, staircase and water detection along with location tracking feature

Abstract

Around 7.6 million people in Bangladesh are visually impaired and approximately 1.1 million are blind. They are deprived of one of the most essential sense. Our main purpose was to lessen the struggles of our country’s visually impaired people. White canes are usually used by has many limitations like detecting objects properly, detecting stairs, head-level objects etc. Moreover, currently available modern systems are costly, thus unaffordable for poor people. Therefore, we are proposing an Arduino based low cost smart cane with multiple sensors which will help a blind person with safe navigation and make him or her more independent. Our final design is quite cheaper than existing alternatives and warns the person via vibratory signals. Our device will be able to detect obstacle, upstairs & downstairs, and presence of water. The device will notify the user by vibration. Our system is also able to provide the location of the user to a particular person in case of emergency. After testing the cane in various situation like educational institution and busy streets we have found it very useful and efficient. There is also a RF remote controller as cane locator for the user to find the device easily.