2017 UKSim-AMSS 19th International Conference on Modelling & Simulation
Intelligent Blind Cane System Mouhamad D. Mashat
Abdulaziz A. Albani
Information Technology Department, Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, King Abdulaziz University Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
[email protected]
Information Technology Department, Faculty of Computing and Information Technology, King Abdulaziz University Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
[email protected]
reference signal that is used to determine the distance between the emitter and the beneficiary. Our proposed solution is a cane that aims to guide visually impaired individuals inside buildings and alert them of surrounding obstacles like walls, stairs and people. The project consists of two main parts: The first is an Android application which is connected to a database to get locations of rooms inside the desired building. The application uses the phone’s sensors to get information about the longitude, latitude and the location regarding sea level. The second part is the cane, which includes an Arduino board using sensors, including ultrasonic, infrared (IR), vibration motor and photocell to locate the surrounding obstacles. For data exchange, the Android application is connected to the cane through Bluetooth. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 shows related work. Section 3 presents the analysis of the problem and includes a discussion of results. Section 4 offers information on the Intelligent Blind Cane system design. Finally, Section 4 includes a summary and conclusion.
Abstract— Around the world, visually impaired individuals struggle with knowing where they are and how to move inside rooms and buildings safely. We have conducted a survey of more than 65 visually impaired individuals to confirm our proposed solution, which has been developed using an Android application and some sensors. This paper presents the methodology behind the Intelligent Blind Cane and demonstrates how the cane helps its user to navigate and recognize locations. After this, the survey, which was conducted with the visually impaired participants, is analysed to identify navigation issues and develop solutions.
The key elements: Intelligence, Blind, Cane, Navigation
I.
INTRODUCTION
According to the World Health Organization, there are 39 million Blind persons around the world [12]. Individuals with visual disabilities regularly encounter obstructions regarding their mobility, yet currently few tools are available to make such navigation less challenging. The task of moving starts in one place. As the person moves on to the next place, the challenge of obstacle avoidance arises [10]. Moving requires focus. The person must discover entrances, know the present area, be aware of environmental attributes like footstep sounds and track the entire journey until the goal is reached. A system that helps navigate routes and avoid obstacles would provide an enormous advantage to accomplish this task. Routing systems are generally used to locate the correct or the fastest route between two points to save time, especially for long distance travel. These frameworks often utilize Global Positioning Systems (GPSs), which function well in open air environments since GPS signals cannot penetrate walls and locate spots inside buildings, so it is important to discover another way to identify precise routes in these situations. An indoor route system is mandatory in a few distinct applications, e.g. in tools that guide visitors through an exhibition hall, help firefighters discover an exit in a smoky domain and support a visually impaired individual in moving around in a building but still with the help of others. The proposed cane does not limit the blind’s movement in any situation even when in emergency. A few innovations have been proposed to make routing within structures achievable. A radio guide may transmit a
978-1-5386-2735-8/17 $31.00 © 2017 IEEE DOI 10.1109/UKSim.2017.26
II.
RELATED WORK
Many researchers have investigated and attempted to develop a gadget to facilitate blind individuals’ ability to move more easily and freely. In 2016, Di Mattia et al. [1] investigated the development and design of an electromagnetic system that integrated with a long cane; the most important design improvements were the small and high performance antenna and the implementation of the circuit board to detect obstacles up to 5 m. Mutiara et al. [2] designed a prototype that can also be integrated with the blind cane. The guide extension can give information about hitch, holes and eight positions of wind direction based on the user. The system can also detect the qibla position and user information by a voice command. Rao et al. [3] planned to use a computer vision system to assist visually impaired individuals in meeting their mobility needs. The system includes a monocular camera to record patterns and a projected laser. A primary limitation identified relates to the laser patterns, which are visible only in the dark. The cane may serve as an answer to assist the blind in moving securely and in distinguishing difficulties in their way [4]; arrangement was made for a foldable version that uses minimal IR sensors mounted on it. It
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functioned in tandem with a headphone to alert the visually impaired with a spoken caution message about the identified snags. The event sensor recognizes any barriers while the slanted sensor identifies obstacles on floors and staircases. Furthermore, it can distinguish whether the stairs are “upward and descending” [4, p. 1153] and a suitable message is played back through headphones utilizing ISD1932 streak memory. The input from the genuine test was certain because all of the obstructions can be distinguished even though the evasion precision was going from 75% to 90% [4]. One of the real difficulties confronted by the visually impaired is obstacle avoidance. In this paper, the idea is a basic but technically advanced cane. A variety of ultrasonic sensors and a standalone GPS with a magnetometer have been interfaced with an Arduino board to support obstacle recognition and route independence. However, the framework lacks long power life, which means that it needs constant recharging after each use, and it is incapable of identifying the nearness of overhead obstacles [5]. Another research project included examination of software called LCPXpresso, which was created with a hardware kit that utilized an equipment pack. The minikit is a hardware model of electronic navigation cane, created progress as an incorporated cane with the innovation of gadgets and equipment parts. This system allows the blind to control the device via a braille capacitive touch keypad and enables the user to enter notes as well [6]. In sound arrangement, the accompanying can be heard time, date, question shading, caution and impediment separation and route bearing and surrounding light and temperature condition. The GPS system of the Advanced Guide Cane is pre-programmed to help with navigation. The system uses Raspberry Pi, which is easy to program and integrates with the two systems in the cane. The GPS system has been tested at Amity University and succeeded in identifying four gates [7]. With the advances of modern technologies, a wide range of gadgets is accessible to bolster the mobility of the visually impaired. These versatilities are known as Electronic Travel Aids (ETAs). The most essential capacity of ETAs for visually impaired individuals is to get data on the state of the street and the position of obstructions when they are in obscure spots. With this data, they are able to arrive at their destinations and stay away from sudden obstacles [8]. K. Kumar et al. [9] proposed a gadget that utilized three sets of ultrasonic trans-recipients with the end goal of an obstacle which can be effectively recognized. The gadget worked proficiently in the scope of 5 to 150 cm. The gadget could also produce sound notices to give feedback to the client about the location of obstacles. Because the high capability of the proposed gadget in distinguishing obstacles, it is relied upon to give a sheltered mobility to the visually impaired individuals [9]. Faria et al. [10] developed an electronic white cane for the blind called SmartVision. The system uses radio-
frequency identification (RFID) technology to navigate the blind to his or her destination. The solution works in both indoor and outdoor environments. Researchers at Stanford University developed a product that brings the computer world to disabled people. The result is an interface [13], which enables blind people to use a Microsoft Windows operating system (OS) [11]. The interface will enable system managers to get feedback from visually impaired individuals who use it. The cane is a proposed answer to enhance the versatility of both the visually impaired and outwardly impeded individuals [4, 10]. The Cane arrangement utilizes distinctive advances like ultrasonic, infrared and laser [4, 9]. The exploratory results identified that the Cane’s responses were exact and that it can recognize all hindrances or obstacles. III.
PROBLEM ANALYSIS
We collected more than 65 responses and found that a majority of the blind and visually impaired participants identified as male as indicated in Figure 1 (74.6%) and
Figure 1 Gender
80.6% of all respondents indicated that they do not want to depend on a companion, as noted in Figure 2.
Figure 2 Moving Preferences
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As shown in Figure 3, visually impaired individuals want to be independent. We also found that 63.6% of all responses show that most of campus buildings are poorly equipped to help the visual impaired individuals. Moreover, we asked participants to rate their experience with existing signs and lanes and found that 37.7% of respondents found that signs and lanes are not useful at all. We asked about the main problems respondents face inside buildings and found that 56.3% confirmed that it takes them plenty of time to arrive to their destination while 42% replied that not knowing where they are is a challenge.
Figure 5 Availability of Mobile Phone
The results related to the needs of visually impaired individuals and their access to technology will be an advantage for us to solve this problem by developing a mobile application. IV.
INTELLIGENT BLIND CANE DESIGN
In this section, we will provide the functional and nonfunctional requirements of the system according to the Use Case diagram (Figure 6).
Figure 3 Building Equipment
We also asked about how they know the time of day; 95.5% indicated they used technology. Of all participants, 61.2% were blind and 23.9% indicated having severe visual impairment.
Figure 4 Blindness Type Figure 6 Use Case Diagram
As shown in Figure 4, 14.9% of the respondents had moderate visual impairment. All participants stated that all blind persons have a mobile phone (see Figure 5).
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The database will contain room corners, which will contain points; each point is composed of x, y and z coordinates (see Figure 7). The coordinates will include longitude, latitude, and sea level. In the Android system and the IBC device, each user will have a unique ID and some personal information.
A. Functional requirements At first use, the application will check if it is synchronized with the IBC Device or not; after it is synchronized with the IBC Device, it will register a new account in the database with the user’s phone number. This feature is called "Login" and the priority is very high. The user will use the “Ask for Direction” feature to ask the cane for the direction to a location of a certain place. The system will calculate the path and guide the user until he or she reaches the destination. If the destination is not existed in the database, the system will notify the user. The priority of this feature is high because the user will engage this function to reach the destination; this feature requires current location data about the user, the location of the destination and the destination would need to be included in the database. The feature "Manage Places" has a high priority and is specialized to the administration of the system. The user can modify and add more rooms in order to reach the destination; this feature requires the corners (points of the room) and the entrance (entry point) of the room. The application will receive the user command to reach the destination and will use the feature "Send Location Data" to communicate with the IBC Server. Feature priority is high because the server will provide the application with data and this feature requires an application program interface (API).
D. Class diagram The code will be written with java; as noted in Figure 8, the Class “Point” will store location points X,Y and Z. The Class “Room” objective is to build a room object which has an ID, name and floor. This object will store the room’s entry point(s) through corner points. Third Class “Route” main objective is to calculate the route using two points: start and end. Finally, the Class “User” will contain the user information (email, password, Phone number and ID) and the user type, which will be either an admin or a user. Our project is object-oriented, so we decided to use one of the Agile methodologies, namely Extreme Programming (XP), because it is more practical for small team use, requires less documentation and allows more coding. In addition, the unit test code is written by the tester before the code is written by a programmer, and there is less risk by breaking the tasks into modules.
B. Non-functional requirements The system will be “Extensible” in some functions and/or components without being affected by other functions and/or components. The priority is high because this attribute allows the system to have more features as it develops continuously, which requires developing an adaptive code and components that must be as independent as possible. Continuous use of the system has a very high priority so the system will be able to “scale” up geographically. The system can be “Portable” because it can work in different environments. The priority of this attribute is high because this requirement allows the user to use the system while moving, which requires an Internet connection. C. Database design
Figure 8 Class Diagram
Figure 7 Entity Relationship Diagram
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V.
[9]
CONCLUSION
Visually impaired individuals are everywhere and often need regular assistance when moving around in public places such as universities, malls or streets. Nevertheless, their feeling of relying on others has become a crucial issue which needs to be addressed. Therefore, it has become of great importance to free them from being dependent. We have presented a framework for the Intelligent Blind Cane System. To overcome the system requirements, we conducted a study with 65 blind and visual impaired persons: 74.6% were male and 26.4% were female. Based on the findings of the study, we have built a database ER-Diagram of the proposed system. We have established relationships among entities and illustrated functional and non-functional requirements. VI.
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First and foremost, we are truly indebted to our supervisor Prof. Mohammed Abdel Razek for his continuous support, supervision and guidance throughout the research. Our deepest appreciation goes to Dr. Reda Salama for his supervision throughout the entire project. We also would like to thank Mrs. Dina T. Mousawa for her coordination to spread the survey. REFERENCES [1]
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