Block-Matching Methods to Help Navigating Visually Impaired People using Raspberry PI Platform

There are millions of blind people in this world who always need some help. These visually impaired people find it challenging to travel outside their homes independently. Basically, it is difficult for blind people pass their day-to-day life with their disabilities. To make their stick smarter, we interfaced some system with their walking stick. In this system we interfaced some smart functions with their stick. The Smart cane that we will design helps the blind society by providing a better and more convenient means of life by moving around independently. The stick consists of ultrasonic sensors and a speaker. Using a network of ultrasonic sensors, this system can detect obstacles around the users up to 400 cm in their direction, i.e., forward, left and right. For further processing of data these ultrasonic sensors are attached to the raspberry pi. The program running in raspberry pi determines the direction of the obstacle that it informs the user by triggering the buzzer and by illustrating the environment. This direction presented to the user in the form of audio. The smart walking cane is very useful for the visually impaired persons for their safety and freedom from the other persons at all the time.

Keywords: Raspberry Pi, Wireless Sensor Network, Obstacle Detection, Emergency Alerts, Panic Switch.