Development of Walking Support System for Visually Impaired People

Currently, shortage of trainers for visually impaired people with professional knowledge is a big problem in Japan (Japan Ministry of Health in Labour and Welfare: Annual Report on Government Measures for Persons with Disabilities, 2014; Fukui in Nippon Hojyoken Kagaku Kenkyu 2(1), 22–25, 2008) [1, 2]. In addition, children with congenital blindness are so difficult to learn to walk by themselves, because they cannot get the visual image. In this research, the authors aim to develop a new support device for walking training that can rise for visual impairment and visually impaired children’s spatial perception. The method involves three stages of training, hand cart type stage, wearable type stage, and final stage. The authors focus on developing a safe, lightweight walking support system that can be worn in children’s waist belt at the second and the third stage. In this paper, the authors proposed the wearable type walking support system that consists of infrared sensor and ultrasonic wave sensor. In addition, the equipment is used at each stage so that it can finally walk independently.