Intelligent assistants for handicapped people's independence: case study
IJSIS '96 Proceedings of the 1996 IEEE International Joint Symposia on Intelligence and Systems
Design and development of an indoor navigation and object identification system for the blind
Assets '04 Proceedings of the 6th international ACM SIGACCESS conference on Computers and accessibility
A Tool for Range Sensing and Environment Discovery for the Blind
CVPRW '04 Proceedings of the 2004 Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshop (CVPRW'04) Volume 3 - Volume 03
CyARM: an alternative aid device for blind persons
CHI '05 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems
A wearable system for mobility improvement of visually impaired people
The Visual Computer: International Journal of Computer Graphics
Mobility interfaces for the visually impaired: what's missing?
Proceedings of the 8th ACM SIGCHI New Zealand chapter's international conference on Computer-human interaction: design centered HCI
Preserving visual information in low resolution images during navigation of visually impaired
Proceedings of the 1st international conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments
The GuideCane-applying mobile robot technologies to assist thevisually impaired
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, Part A: Systems and Humans
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Visually impaired people are faced with challenges in detecting information about terrain. This paper presents a new walking support system for the blind to navigate without any assistance from others or using a guide cane. In this research, a belt, wearable around the waist, is equipped with four ultrasonic sensors and one sharp infrared sensor. Based on mathematical models, the specifications of the ultrasonic sensors are selected to identify optimum orientation of the sensors for detecting stairs and holes. These sensors are connected to a microcontroller and laptop for analyzing terrain. An algorithm capable of classifying various types of obstacles is developed. After successful tests using laptop, the microcontroller is used for the walking system, named 'Belt for Blind', to navigate their environment. The unit is also equipped with a servo motor and a buzzer to generate outputs that inform the user about the type of obstacle ahead. The device is light, cheap, and consumes less energy. However, this device is limited to standard pace of mobility and cannot differentiate between animate and inanimate obstacles. Further research is recommended to overcome these deficiencies to improve mobility of blind people.