Smart Cane: Face Recognition System for Blind

Abstract

We propose a smart cane with a face recognition system to help the blind in recognizing human faces. This system detects and recognizes faces around them. The result of the detection is informed to the blind person through a vibration pattern. The proposed system was designed to be used in real-time and is equipped with a camera mounted on the glasses, a vibration motor attached to the cane and a mobile computer. The camera attached to the glasses sends image to mobile computer. The mobile computer extracts features from the image and then detects the face using Adaboost. We use the modified census transform (MCT) descriptor for feature extraction. After face detection, the information regarding the detected face image is gathered. We used compressed sensing with L2-norm as a classifier. Cane is equipped with a Bluetooth module and receives a person's information from the mobile computer. The cane generates vibration patterns unique to each person as to inform a blind person about the identity of the detected person using the camera. Hence, the blind people can know the person standing in front of them.