An Interactive Wireless Navigation Systems for A Visually Challenged Person in The Smart City
For many centuries the opportunities of physically challenged people have been limited compared to ordinary citizens. However, the technologies are developing in today’s modern world, and most of the projects are being conducted for the use of healthy people. In this paper, we present a smart navigation system called Eyewatch. The Eyewatch system is produced for making the world of blind people a better place. This is not only used for recognizing of objects the particular time, but also for navigation and other purposes.
Keywords: Internet of Things, Ultrasonic Sensor, RFID, Tactile Display, Wireless
Introduction
Every year, the percentage of the visually challenged people are increasing swiftly. The World Health Organization (WHO, 2011) estimates that there are 39 million blind people and 246 million visually impaired people internationally. Also, visual impairments are closely associated with aging. About 65% of the blind are 50 years of age or older, with about 20% of the world’s population in this age group (WHO, 2011). In Europe, in particular, about 90% of visually impaired and partially sighted people are over the age of 60. It is predicted that without additional interventions, these numbers will rise to 75 million blind and 200 million visually impaired by the year 2020 (WHO, 2010).
This thing is an artificial intelligence which works as a friend which shows the direction and provides safety. While consuming the item, it helps to walk without the stick and identify the objects that will make the movement impossible. At night-time, the watch provides the led indicator that makes the cars awake of the movement of disabled persons. However the mission seems too simple, it includes the other fields of advanced information technologies. For instance: IOT, programming the hardware and software and creating the artificial intelligence as well. The ability to sense the objects of sensors is made by using the geometric calculations.
The signals, which are sent from the item, would go to the objects, and send the signal to the central microcontroller and analyze the received signal by dividing into true and false.
In this paper in this article, we describe Eyewatch system which is navigation device for the blind person. Eyewatch is measured as one of the tasks of IoT and can be connected to the devices of IoT. When moving it provides the information about the location of the traffic lights, restaurants, subways, bus stations, and other places and the coming to the right place. For the blind people, it is exactly impossible to use the Google map, nonetheless with the Eyewatch application, it is easy to connect directly to it.
Related work
Mobility aids like a walking stick and guide dogs are still used by the blind even today. With the advances in technology, some different types of electronic travel aid have been developed to support the mobility of the blind. Most of the commonly used electronic travel aids use ultrasound.
Certainly, there are projects like the smart helmet and smart gloves for blind people. Nevertheless, the sensitivity of them is limited to only 30 degrees. Mobility, orientation and obstacle recognition are key to personal independence for the visually challenged. White canes, sensor canes, and guide dogs are the most widely used assistive techniques, but they have limitations.
In another case, we also know products by Samsung Gear, Apple watches, and LG watches already exist, but Smartwatch gadgets are used for another purpose, such as listening music, pulse rate of the heart, etc,.
As it is widely known, the problem is not resolved by recognizing the objects with the ultra-signals. As it is for the blind people, it requires the making the artificial intelligence instead of eyes and gathering the information as much as possible.
Design of network and wireless configuration
Eyewatch alone is not enough to work competently, in this case, eyw_mcp is used as a sensor hub item. This is also one of the elements of IoT, and it can be connected to ubiquitously in a standard condition. For instance: on the roads, subways, bus stations, transports, restaurants, restrooms, etc. The structure shown in Fig. 2 One of the advantages of Eyew_mcp is it can be used even solar panel where no power supply.
Figure 2 Design of the wireless navigation systems
The Eyewatch system is designed for navigation, and it should be connected with other IoT devices. The fig.3 shows the IOT architecture of eyewatch navigation system. According to this scheme, eyewatch not only linked to the sensor, but it can connect to the gateway and the middleware via a smartphone. Middleware system specialized for data analyzing and system management. It has a user interface which can be controlled by the administrator. In this system used MQTT protocol for data transmission. MQTT-S is an extension of the open publish/subscribe protocol Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT).
In this paper, we propose a sensor hub, called eye_mcp, which allows connecting and taking sensor data using wireless communication techniques such as WiFi and Bluetooth from external sensors quickly. Shown in Figure 4. Eye_mcp as intercessor that collects, combined, processes, and sends sensor data to a gateway. Data transmission between external sensors and sensor hub is conducted through an individual program.
Figure 3 System Architecture
Figure 4 Eye_mcp device
Tactile display for using braille alphabet
The Braille display is a device to assist the visually impaired person to read text messages, especially those text messages that are displayed at train stations or Airport. In our project, using tactile display users can read messages. This system essentially is an English and symbolical text to braille conversion with the utilization of a microcontroller. Shown in fig.5. When Eyewatch wearer is connecting with Smartphone, Smartphone sends hex messages to the microcontroller via a Bluetooth device. The system can alert with vibrations the wearer.
Figure 6 Braille Alphabet and Tactile Display
Conclusions
This paper is about what has been made to assist the blind people by breaking limits. All the items of the Eyewatch system work to make correct and clear decisions.
The system Eyewatch is not just a smartwatch or the guide, it is the system that could create an alliance of several systems in this industry. Eyw_mcp, Deevocase, Eyewatch application extend the capabilities of the device.
Of course, the results of the paper are not on the finish line and include a head start on better results. Subsequently, people with limited abilities can probably move in our society without the hassle. Because everything is creating for the sake of humanity and well-being.
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