Open AccessDevelopment and design of an intelligent guide stick for the blind
Author(s) -
Yunan Ren,
Junzhe Huang,
Hao He,
Yixuan Wang,
Haohan Zhu,
Zhiyu Li,
Jin He
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
journal of physics. conference series
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.21
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1742-6596
pISSN - 1742-6588
DOI - 10.1088/1742-6596/1748/6/062056
Subject(s) - obstacle , global positioning system , microcontroller , alarm , computer science , broadcasting (networking) , simulation , computer security , telecommunications , engineering , computer hardware , electrical engineering , political science , law
China has the largest group of disabled people in the world, and blind people account for a large part. However, we pay less attention to the blind, especially to the infrastructure for their daily life. In this paper, a guide stick was designed based on STM32F103C8T6 microcontroller to improve the safety for the blind. An ultrasonic module completed the distance measurement and GPS module located the blind. When the distance to obstacles was not more than 100cm, the guide stick gave a voice alarm and vibrated to warn the blind. The guide stick broadcasted the distance from its current location to the nearest obstacle when the broadcasting button was pressed. The current location was sent to the guardian by pressing the message button, which was useful especially when the blind user needed help. For experiments, ten blind people walked with guide sticks at different starting distances and speeds according to their own walking habits. 540 groups of data were obtained, among which 498 groups avoided obstacles successfully. The average success rate was 93%. It shows that under the normal walking speed (≤30cm/ s), the guide stick can effectively help the blind avoid obstacles and improve their safety.