Glove For Blind People

Blind, and the visually impaired people have a lot of difficulty in doing everyday tasks such as moving from one point to another without bumping into objects, identification of everyday products and safety from hot objects. This paper describes the design and development of a smart glove to assist

Project Title

Glove For Blind People

Project Area of Specialization

Wearables and Implantable

Project Summary

Blind, and the visually impaired people have a lot of difficulty in doing everyday tasks such as moving from one point to another without bumping into objects, identification of everyday products and safety from hot objects. This paper describes the design and development of a smart glove to assist the blind and the visually impaired people to navigate easily, safely, identify products which they are holding, detect any obstacles in their path and differentiate between temperatures of different products. The system is based on a Raspberry Pi with synthetic speech output which give directions to the user. A bar-code scanner is mounted on the top side of the glove that tells the user about the product he/she is holding in his/her hand. Two ultrasonic sensors are mounted on the front side of the glove that will detect any moving or stationary object through vibrations of motors. A heat sensor is attached on the lower side of finger which will measure the temperature and warns the user about the hot products. One of the key Unique Selling Proposition (USP) of this glove is its extremely low manufacturing cost as compared to the technologies present nowadays for blind which cost almost ten times of what the glove presented in this paper does. This glove can easily be marketed as a social impact project considering its ease of use and a very competitive price.

Project Objectives

The basic objective and aim of our project was to develop a smart device for the blind and visually impaired people. The main objective was to ease their day to day interactions in the real world and also to help them perform their most arduous task i.e. navigating from one place to next, very easily in a closed path or a building where gps or other guidance systems aren’t available.  So for that purpose we came to decide about designing a device which can help the blind in indoor navigation from one place or room to another. Other objectives included to develop the device for object detection and product identification (through it’s barcode scanner). The following tasks were performed with the help of sensors incorporated with the main controller of our glove. Also one of the main tasks was two-sided voice communications i.e. we give voice command to the glove, and in return after processing the voice commands, the glove then process it and give back the voice output in also speech format.

Project Implementation Method

The project’s main tasks were:

• Indoor navigation
• Product identification
• Object detection
• Heat sensing

Each were implemented using the following methodologies:

1. Indoor navigation:

We have used two software for this purpose:

• ArcGIS
• QGIS

From the former one, we incorporated a map of FMC (Fazia Medical College) ground floor and then we geo-referenced it with the real, outdoor map of the building. By this we were able to find the real point to point coordinates of the rooms and halls in our map of the building. By the help of later one, we were able to find:

• Shortest path between two points.
• PgRouting
• Steps required to reach from one point to another.

1. Product Identification:

We have used a standard barcode scanner to identify the products by their barcode. The database of some products was fed into the glove, so that when we detect the product, the product’s info is then converted to voice output, so that the blind can know which product that person in holding.

1. Object Detection:

The incoming object to the blind person is detected by the ultrasonic sensor HC-Sr04 and proximity sensors. What these sensors do is that, with the help of vibration feedback, informs the user that an object is coming into his direction, or whether an object is placed near his glove.

1. Heat Sensing:

To know whether the object the person wants to hold is hot or hazardous due to extreme temperature, a heat sensor is placed into the palm of the user, in the bottom side of the glove ,and what it does, is that it tells the user by speech output whether the object is hot or not.

Benefits of the Project

Wearing the proposed glove can make the user feel more secure from of the difficult things facing him. The blind person walks without knowing what are the hidden risks in the next step? It may be a pit or staircase or wall in front of him, the gloves here have a significant role in securing the next step for him. Also to feel blind person that he is independent; he can go anywhere without someone’s aid. That making him feel a degree of independence and self-reliance. On the other hand, it is easy to use and that because of the simplicity in its size. In addition, it will develop more models which will come with further advancements and upgradations.

Technical Details of Final Deliverable

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1nSzeMbSxh_OW8bCkN099dZ4hdBmoUCKT

Final Deliverable of the Project

HW/SW integrated system

Type of Industry

Medical

Technologies

Wearables and Implantables

Sustainable Development Goals

Good Health and Well-Being for People

Required Resources

If you need this project, please contact me on contact@adikhanofficial.com