Real Time Assistive Shoe for Visually Impaired People

Visually disabled people come across many challenges on a daily basis, some challenges are new and some routine. Since blind people cannot detect the obstacles or move to any destinations independently. Most of the times the blind typically use traditional canes that cannot detect the objects higher than the waist. The innovation with one of the wearable technology aids underprivileged visually impaired people with a new merge for eyes-free navigation in an environment that is in identifying the obstacles ahead of them and moving to the destination through a navigation path. More importantly, when visually challenged people using this wearable technology need not carry any other additional support instruments. This technology is embedded into the shoe part, making the footwear powerful in determining the obstacles ahead of the bearer. The prototype consists of two modules namely the phone module and shoe module. The shoe module is incorporated with a lightweight controller device and sensors whereas the phone-module includes GPS system. The controller in the shoe module is attached with a Bluetooth transceiver which syncs to a smart phone app that uses Google maps to direct the person and facilitates the user by providing the information about the path. Once the user selects the destination then the route is laid, the direction is constantly updated to allow the user to go according to the pattern from being dynamically adaptive and avoids any diversion from a planned directional path. The signal sent from the phone module will be determined by the Bluetooth and a corresponding message is sent to the controller in the shoe module. The major objective in this paper is to keep the device smart and cost efficient. The software used is reliable and stable.