Smart wearable device helps visually impaired people move easily
This is a product researched, manufactured by a group of young authors from the Faculty of Mechanical Technology, Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City, to support the visually impaired people when moving.
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In Vietnam, more than 1 million people are visually impaired, accounting for 1.12% of the country's population. Of these, more than 600,000 people lost their sight completely. Blind people face many difficulties in walking, because most still use manual walking sticks. They face many obstacles in identifying obstacles and orientation such as not being able to recognize objects at a height that cannot be reached by the cane, easily losing direction when entering a dead end or when constantly changing direction, due to the inability to recognize obstacles during movement. Another reason why the orientation of the visually impaired is affected is that the clubhead is easily deformed due to physical impact. Therefore, the creation of products that can better support the visually impaired needs to continue to be researched to improve.
Face with that fact, the research team designed and built a smart wearable device that helps blind people detect obstacles in front through an infrared sensor, and then warns the user with a vibration mechanism. The device is easy to use and flexible, can change the wearing position easily.
The product's hardware consists of blocks: source, sensor, processor and actuator. In particular, the source block is a rechargeable Lithium battery with voltage of 3.7V with a capacity of 400 mAh, through a 3.3V voltage rectifier to supply power to other blocks. In addition, a battery charging circuit is also integrated into the system so that users do not need to replace the battery every time it runs out of capacity. The sensor block includes a time-of-flight distance sensor. The processor block consists of a 32-bit microprocessor. The actuator block consists of a vibrating motor.
The hardware is placed in a small box (4x6x3cm), made of 3D printed plastic, so the product is quite light (150gr), suitable for wearing on people. The product works based on two features: object detection and user warning. When the product works, the sensor emits a laser and receives the reflected signal from the obstacles, thereby determining the distance between the user and the object. When the distance between the user and the obstacle is below a specific threshold level (1m), the product alerts the user with a vibration mechanism. To use the product, users only need to open and close the switch.
The device accurately detects 100% light-colored obstacles 1m away from people if indoors, outdoors, the accuracy drops to 80% at a distance of 80cm. However, for dark obstacles, the accuracy is worse (90% indoors and 50% outdoors).
Due to its compact design, the product can be flexibly worn in many positions on the body such as hands, hats, shoes, belts to detect obstacles at different ranges. This is the product's advantage over other devices (sticks do not detect high range, glasses do not detect low range). However, the device currently has some limitations, such as the low object detection distance (under 1m), the battery life is not high, the vibration is still a bit light, so the team continues to research to improve the product.
The team's research results have just been announced at the 3rd Young Scientific Conference in 2021 of the Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City.
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