Design of a wearable walking-guide system for the blind

Abstract

A wearable walking-guide system for blind people or visually handicapped is investigated and designed. The acoustic signal interface is employed for notifying the obstacle information to the user. For easy understanding, the front direction of user is divided to ten sectors and the system notifies the user to the sector in which the closest obstacle located. As a controller, the system has a microprocessor and a PDA. All of the information about obstacle in front of user is checked by three ultrasound sensor pairs and delivered to the microprocessor which analyzes the information and generates the acoustic signal for alarm. In order to avoid interference occurring by the alarm sound, the bone conduction(BC) headphone is used. It because it is set up behind ear and ear canal remained vacant to hear the environmental sound which the blind people use as one of essential signal for walking. In addition to the alarm signal, the system provides the user with guide voice using the PDA which has the text-to-speech (TTS) program for easy and safe guidance. Generally, almost of people who are blind has inclination to hide their disability, they reluctant to use the assistive device which reveals their disability. Therefore, we designed the wearable type of system and almost of the system are concealed in the clothes. We expect that blind people will use this system without any hesitation. According to the design concept, a prototype of the system was implemented and some experiments were carried out.