Problem Statement:

My friends and I had nothing in mind when we thought of ideas for this project, but then we came up with a problem that we wanted to solve. As part of our Innovation School Residency, we wanted to help the blind in their problem of walking with a stick, so we decided to work towards a new smart aid for visually impaired.

Idea:

We started our project by using a bought walking stick for the blind and trying to figure out where to attach the sensors and motors along with all the other electronic equipment like ESP32 boards, wires, breadboard, power supply to make a better aid for visually impaired. We spent approximately a day on the stick but eventually guided by our mentors we found that our project would have more flaws than we would have been able to fix. We also found out that adding a detection system onto a detection system(The original stick) was not an effective idea.

Objectives:

• Detect objects using an ultrasonic sensor
• Cross-check the output of the sensor with a preprogrammed value such as 150cm
• Activates the actuator connected to a haptic motor which creates vibrations
• Inform the user of obstacles using different combinations of vibration
• Increases vibrations with increase decrease in gap between user and object

Final Solution:

We ended up taking forward an incomplete idea by another set of craters named, they made a project called BAT-NAV which was a small module attached to the back of their foot. Their project can be viewed in detail below in the given links. We decided to fix all the flaws in their project while adding our innovation to it. We fixed the foot modules by shifting them up to the ankle/shin and adding a head module which fits around the ears of the user to detect any obstacles at head level.

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