Lego Robot for Guiding the Blind

Abstract

One kind of health problem that exists today is blindness. There are ways to communicate with blind people such as braille. There are also ways to help them in their predicament such as using guide dogs or having another person help them with certain things. The robot I made was based on guide dogs, a type of dog which guides a blind person and helps them go to different places. It uses an infrared sensor to detect walls and other obstacles, then guides the blind person around, giving them directions by saying certain things like saying ”Turn left” to inform the blind person that they should turn left, saying “Turn right” so the blind person knows to turn right, and saying “Object detected” to warn them that the robot has detected an obstacle. I used LEGO Mindstorms EV3 to build my robot. Compared to a normal guide dog, there are a few pros and cons to this robot: Pros: - It does not need to be fed food constantly - There is no need to take it to the vet Cons: - Its sources of power such as batteries might need to be changed constantly depending on how much it gets used every day.