Low-Cost System for Travel Aid and Obstacles Detection for the Visually Impaired People

摘要

Disability is nowadays an issue present in the society. People affected by some disability usually have problems to carry out their daily tasks due to their dependency. Inside the known disabilities, the blindness is perhaps one of the most problematic ones due to the fact of not being able to freely move for fear of encountering some obstacle. We can find several commercial devices that help the bind to move. However, in most cases these solutions are too expensive. In this paper, we are going to present a low-cost system for travel aid and obstacles detection for the visually impaired people. The system consists of two parts, i.e., a belt with three acoustic sensors to measure distances and a bracelet that contains two vibration motors that codify the information that comes from the belt into a sort of vibration. To check the operation of this travel aid system, we have established a threshold of 1 m from which the bracelet should warn the user. Finally, the system has been tested in a controlled environment with very successful results.