Development of an Intelligent Cane for Visually Impaired Human Subjects

Abstract

People with visual disabilities are often dependent on external assistance which is provided by either humans, trained dogs, or other special electronic devices for decision making but there are certain limitations to these aids. Hence, an intelligent white cane is developed for visually challenged people which makes use of HR-SO4 ultrasonic sensors to detect any obstacle that lies in the range of the the sensor and determine its distance. The ultrasonic sensor has range up to 450 meters so that any object lying within this range can be easily detected and the warning signal is provided using the buzzer which gives beeping signals in order to alert the user for prompt action. Also, an intelligent technique of object detection and classification using the web camera which captures the image and hence classifies it is being used. The classification obtained is in the form of text which is further converted to audio signal using text-to-speech conversion which is implemented in Python using Espeak open source library.