Navigate the world easier for visually impaired people
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One of our team member's grandparents has become visually impaired, so we had the idea to create a wearable gadget to help people like him navigate the world. This project was submitted to Lemelson-MIT Inventeam, a national competition to create an innovation to benefit society.
This is a wearable gadget that transduces the distance of obstacles to haptic feedback in order to better visualize one's surroundings.
The device consists of 3 main parts: a 3D printed cast to hold the electronics in the shape of a neckband, an arduino circuit to combine ultrasonic sensors, haptic feedback motors, and the microcontroller, and finally the program to create the actual function.
There was initial difficulty coordinating all parts of the project. In the end, we learned effective communication skills and gained experience in the prototyping cycle.
We successfully created and prototyped a device that helps visually impaired people navigate the world, which has the potential to benefit society.
Once the battery pack is connected and the driver program is uploaded, the motors will automatically begin to vibrate based on one's distance to their surroudings.
For more examples, please refer to the Documentation
Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.
Chinar Joshi - [email protected] - Linkedin
Project Link: Github
Front view:
Back View:
Side View:
Demonstration of functionality as distances are output to serial monitor:
View of the internals comprising of ultrasonic sensors and DC motors:
3D printed ultrasonic sensor cast:
