The Design Concept of Intelligent Guide Cane

Some people are congenial blindness or visually impaired while the others are caused by acquired factors. One reason that results in poor vision or blindness is age. As people get old, the eyesight of people is destined to deteriorate. Normally, people with poor vision can only live in a familiar environment to ensure their own safety. The mobility of people with impaired vision is restricted and they may live in inconvenient life. Therefore, in this study, we aim to provide a design concept of novel intelligent guide cane to enhance the mobility of visually impaired people. The proposed design is to add some functions to the original guide cane and connect the intelligent guide cane with hand-held device. Since the hand-held device that is widely used in today and has a considerable amount of computing, the proposed design can act as an auxiliary machine similar to guide dogs or better than guide dogs. The proposed design aims to provide the functions such as route planning, navigation, obstacle detection, and object recognition. With the proposed design, the mobility of visually impaired people can be greatly improved.