Experimental study on shoe based navigation system for the visually impaired

Abstract World Health Organization statistics show that 37 million individuals in world are affected by blindness. People with partial as well as complete visual impairment are usually dependent on some other people, dogs or stick to travel outdoor. It leads to damaging their self-esteem. With current technological advancement, it is essential for providing people with visually impairment a tool that can help them travel independently in the surrounding. A shoe based navigation system is developed for the visually impaired where an individual can be assisted to travel around freely in the surrounding. It aids the person to avoid obstacles when travelling alone. As the navigation system is fitted in the individual’s shoes, it helps the person to move freely. Moreover, an ultrasonic sensor and an infrared sensor are used to find the range of obstacle and reduce the prediction of number of false positives respectively. This data is in turn given to the ARM cortex M3 microcontroller which determines if an obstacle is present or not. A force sensitive resistor (FSR) is used to optimize the system efficiency. Cloud computing concept is also incorporated so that the data can be accessed anywhere.