Development of a White-Cane-Extension to Detect Automatic Doors

The majority visually impaired persons are using a white cane to move within their environment. They avoid to collision the obstacles by detecting objects when swinging white cane touches them. An automatic door is opened when it detects the person comes to it by the sensor, for example, infrared sensor. This kind of automatic doors are very useful because we need not touch the doors in order to open them. However, for majority visually impaired persons, it is difficult to detected automatic doors because they detect the object by touching. In this paper, we propose the detection method which tells the existence of automatic doors to the visually impaired person. The device is consisted of an infrared sensor and a vibration motor. The infrared sensor is put on the tip of the white cane and the vibration motor is put on close to the hand. And when it detects the infrared signal, the vibration motor runs. Then the visually impaired persons can through the automatic door in safety without any cares.