Automated Headgear for the Visually Impaired

This paper presents the design and implementation of automated headgear for the visually impaired. The idea is a mechanism that can aid a vision impaired person to participate in social activities like a sighted person without human guides. Conversely, the mechanism serves as the ‘eye’, making the user to act normal without restraints or confinement. This product therefore aim to replace the traditional stick or human guide used mostly by a visually impaired person to walk around. The artefact was designed to replicate the basic functions of the eyes to include ability to sighting obstacles far and near, the depth of the obstacle and the position or location of the obstacle. Engineering requirements were gathered by observation of the visually impaired persons to understand how they navigate and relate with various environments as well as how they respond to dangers or obstacles. The design is based on embedded system principles, using Raspberry Pi platform to integrate the appropriate sensors such as proximity sensor, ultrasonic sensor, motion sensor, GPS as well as software programs that control the physical devices. The resulting visual Headgear senses and collect data from the environment dynamically and communicate to the system controller. The data collected is processed by the inbuilt algorithm, and appropriately, directs the user accordingly with voice output.

Keywords:

Assistive Technology , Embedded Systems , Detection Sensors , Obstacle Avoidance , Visually Impaired.