“BlindShoe”: An Electronic Guidance System for the Visually Impaired People

Abstract

The number of visually impaired people is rising with the rapid growth of population. The visually impaired people face difficulties in their daily living owing to the lost of their vision. The primary purpose of this paper is to develop a low-cost tool that can help the visually impaired people by providing proper instructions while moving on the surroundings. We proposed a solution by developing an electronic guidance system to aid the visually impaired people in navigation by detecting obstacles in the front and the backside of the individuals. This system comprised a smartphone, sensors, microcontroller, and a data transmission device. The sensors gathered information from the surroundings, and the microcontroller detected the obstacles by processing the information. The communication between the microcontroller and smartphone was done via data transmission device (Bluetooth module). The smartphone provided continuous instructions to keep the individuals in proper track. The proposed system could detect the obstacles within 100 cm with an accuracy of 97.33%. This implies that the proposed prototype is able to facilitate the visually impaired people in safe navigation.