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Design and Implementation of a Walking Stick Aid for Visually Challenged People

Visually challenged people (VCPs) face many difficulties in their routine life. Usually, in many cases, they need to depend upon others, which makes them unconfident in an unfamiliar environment. Thus, in this paper, we present an aid that helps in detecting obstacles and water puddles in their way....

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Sahoo, Nilima, Lin, Hung-Wei, Chang, Yeong-Hwa
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6339061/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30609745
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s19010130
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author Sahoo, Nilima
Lin, Hung-Wei
Chang, Yeong-Hwa
author_facet Sahoo, Nilima
Lin, Hung-Wei
Chang, Yeong-Hwa
author_sort Sahoo, Nilima
collection PubMed
description Visually challenged people (VCPs) face many difficulties in their routine life. Usually, in many cases, they need to depend upon others, which makes them unconfident in an unfamiliar environment. Thus, in this paper, we present an aid that helps in detecting obstacles and water puddles in their way. This system comprises a walking stick and Android-based applications (APPs). The walking stick is embedded with Raspberry Pi and programmable interface controller (PIC) as a control kernel, sensors, a global position system (GPS) module, and alert-providing components. Sensors help to detect obstacles, and the VCP is informed through vibrations or a buzzer according to the obstacle detected. The GPS module receives the coordinates of the VCP’s location, and the location can be tracked by parents using an APP. Another important APP is used, called an emergency APP, by which the VCP can communicate with parents or friends immediately by just shaking his/her cell phone or pushing the power button four times in 5 s in panic situations. We used fewer components to make the device simple, lighter, and cozy with very good features. This device will help VCPs to live an independent life up to some extent (with security), which ultimately will increase their confidence level in an unknown environment.
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spelling pubmed-63390612019-01-23 Design and Implementation of a Walking Stick Aid for Visually Challenged People Sahoo, Nilima Lin, Hung-Wei Chang, Yeong-Hwa Sensors (Basel) Article Visually challenged people (VCPs) face many difficulties in their routine life. Usually, in many cases, they need to depend upon others, which makes them unconfident in an unfamiliar environment. Thus, in this paper, we present an aid that helps in detecting obstacles and water puddles in their way. This system comprises a walking stick and Android-based applications (APPs). The walking stick is embedded with Raspberry Pi and programmable interface controller (PIC) as a control kernel, sensors, a global position system (GPS) module, and alert-providing components. Sensors help to detect obstacles, and the VCP is informed through vibrations or a buzzer according to the obstacle detected. The GPS module receives the coordinates of the VCP’s location, and the location can be tracked by parents using an APP. Another important APP is used, called an emergency APP, by which the VCP can communicate with parents or friends immediately by just shaking his/her cell phone or pushing the power button four times in 5 s in panic situations. We used fewer components to make the device simple, lighter, and cozy with very good features. This device will help VCPs to live an independent life up to some extent (with security), which ultimately will increase their confidence level in an unknown environment. MDPI 2019-01-02 /pmc/articles/PMC6339061/ /pubmed/30609745 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s19010130 Text en © 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Sahoo, Nilima
Lin, Hung-Wei
Chang, Yeong-Hwa
Design and Implementation of a Walking Stick Aid for Visually Challenged People
title Design and Implementation of a Walking Stick Aid for Visually Challenged People
title_full Design and Implementation of a Walking Stick Aid for Visually Challenged People
title_fullStr Design and Implementation of a Walking Stick Aid for Visually Challenged People
title_full_unstemmed Design and Implementation of a Walking Stick Aid for Visually Challenged People
title_short Design and Implementation of a Walking Stick Aid for Visually Challenged People
title_sort design and implementation of a walking stick aid for visually challenged people
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6339061/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30609745
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s19010130
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