Detection and notification of dangerous obstacles and places for visually impaired persons using a smart cane

Abstract

People with visual impairment often might knock up against dangerous obstacles while walking and they might fall down the stairs or fall down from train platforms onto train tracks, because they cannot visually get the situation and they sometimes cannot environmental information correctly via an existing white cane. Recently smart white canes which have sensors and provide visually impaired persons with obstacle information, have been developed. This paper proposes the method that can detect only dangerous obstacles and places correctly and can inform visually impaired persons of them effectively. By the experiment results its effectiveness has been clarified.