Smart Walk: A Smart Stick for the Visually Impaired

Abstract

It is estimated that globally, 285 million people in  the world are visually impaired, while 39 million  are completely blind. Visual impairment may  cause difficulties for people to do their daily  activities. There is a need for innovative, ambient, or active assisted living (IAAL) solution(s) to be  designed, developed, and deployed for the  visually impaired individuals. This paper presents  a design of a smart stick for visually impaired  individuals as an IAAL solution. The smart stick  comprises ultrasonic sensors to detect objects and  obstacles, a camera to capture the objects, a GPS  module for location update and navigation, and a  Raspberry Pi 3B+ which acts as a central unit for  the whole system. The smart stick was tested in  different environments and backgrounds. The  image classification and object detection accuracy  of the smart stick system was within the range of  59 per cent to 89 per cent (minimum and  maximum range). The smart stick helped the  visually impaired individuals to manage walking around their environment. The proposed system  will improve the life of visually impaired people since it managed to accurately identify and detect objects with a 89 per cent accuracy level at a one meter distance.

https://doi.org/10.59200/ICONIC.2022.014