A new robotic system to assist visually impaired people

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a new robotic system to assist visually impaired people in unknown indoor and outdoor environments. The robotic system, which is equipped with a visual sensor, laser range finders, speaker, gives visually impaired people information about the environment around them. The laser data are analyzed using the clustering technique, making it possible to detect obstacles, steps and stairs. By using the visual sensor, the system is able to distinguish between objects and humans. The PC analyses the sensors data and send information to the visually impaired people by natural language or beep signal. The usefulness of the proposed system is examined experimentally.