Abstract
Abstract: As humans tend to be reliant on their sense of sight to gather information about their surroundings, this allows them to feel safe and connected. White canes have been a common solution to visual impairment concerns however it was shown that such tools are still unable to resolve problems pertaining to obstructions on height level. This paper aims to create a smart stick which is able to resolve such concerns while including an emergency button feature that will inform emergency contacts via SMS of the location of the user once pressed. The gathered results will answer the following (a) reliability of the smart stick’s detection of obstructions, (b) effect of the environment to the performance of the device, and (c) effect of the distance between the user and emergency contact to the speed of transmission if the emergency button is pressed. It was found that the smart still is reliable in terms of detection with a high accuracy percentage and is able to determine if stairs are going up or down, the environment has little effect on the performance of the smart stick, and if the distance is farther the speed of transmission is more consistent.
References
Sprouse, S. (2022, July 20). Making sense of your five senses. Ask The Scientists. https://askthescientists.com/senses/#toggle-id-1.
Blakely, M. (2023, April 10). The importance of sight and Vision – Molly blakely. Marvel Optics. https://marveloptics.com/blog/scholarship-program/the-importance-of-sight-and-vision-molly-blakely/#:~:text=Sight%20and%20vision%20are%20important,eyes%20then%20focus%20this%20light.
World Health Organization. (n.d.). Vision Impairment and blindness. World Health Organization. Retrieved September 24, 2022, from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/blindness-and-visual-impairment
Ackland, P., Resnikoff, S., & Bourne, R. (2017). World blindness and visual impairment: Despite many successes, the problem is growing. Community eye health. Retrieved September 24, 2022, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC582068/
Riazi, A., Riazi, F., Yoosfi, R., & Bahmeei, F. (2016, May 2). Outdoor difficulties experienced by a group of visually impaired Iranian people. Journal of Current 133 Ophthalmology. Retrieved September 24, 2022, from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S245223251530055X
Nichols, Allan (1995), Why Use the Long White Cane? https://www.blind.net/g42w0001.htm.
Nowshin, N., Shadman, S., Shadman, S., Joy, S., Joy, S., Aninda, S., … Minhajul, I. M. (2017). An Intelligent Walking Stick for the Visually-Impaired People. International Journal of Online and Biomedical Engineering (iJOE), 13(11), pp. 94–101. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijoe.v13i11.7565
Agrawal, M. P., & Gupta, A. R. (2018, September 27). Smart stick for the blind and visually impaired people. IEEE Xplore. Retrieved October 3, 2022, from https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8473344.
Arora, A. S., & Gaikwad, V. (2017, June 15). Blind aid stick: Hurdle recognition, simulated perception, Android integrated voice based cooperation via GPS along with a panic alert system. IEEE Xplore. Retrieved from https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7947957
Bele, S., Ghule, S., Gunjal, A., & Anwat, N. (2020, July 9). Design and implementation of smart blind stick. SSRN. Retrieved November 27, 2022, from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstractid=3645413
Budilaksono, S., Bertino, B., Suwartane, Rosadi, A., Suwarno, Purtiningrum, Sari, Y., Suhandono, E., Sakti, Gustina, D., & Riyadi, A. (2020, January 1). Designing an Ultrasonic Sensor Stick Prototype for Blind People. IOP Publishing. Retrieved from https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/1471/1/012020/pdf
Bauer CM, Hirsch GV, Zajac L, Koo B-B, Collignon O, Merabet LB (2017) Multimodal MR-imaging reveals large-scale structural and functional connectivity changes in profound early blindness. PLoS ONE 12(3): e0173064. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0173064