THE HAPTIC SHOE FOR BLIND PEOPLE

IOT

According to the recent report of the World Health Organization (WHO), 314 million people in the world are visually impaired and out of them, 15% are blind. The proposed system is a smart shoe that has been designed to use haptic technology to enable the blind and visually impaired people to walk independently. This project presents a prototype model and a system concept to provide a smart electronic aid for blind people. This system is intended to provide object detection and real-time assistance. It comprises of a microcontroller, ultrasonic sensor, a smart phone, and a vibrating motor. This project aims at the development of an Electronic Travelling Aid (ETA) kit to help the blind people to find obstacle free path. This ETA is fixed to the shoe. When the object is detected, it alerts them through voice command. The shoe enables the user to detect obstacles and helps to walk by using a smart phone. It consists of vibrating motors on the shoes. With the help of a navigation application installed on a smart phone, the users can connect with the shoe via Wi-Fi and interact with the app to set a destination. Once the destination has been set, the smart phone provides the route and through a series of vibrations, guide the user from one point to another. The right shoe will vibrate when the right turn should be taken and left shoe will vibrate when the left turn should be taken. The user is guided via a series of vibrations to the destination. The shoe includes ultrasonic sensors to detect obstacles.

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