Project
| # | Title | Team Members | TA | Documents | Sponsor |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 58 | Ultrasonic Spatial Awareness Device for the Visually Impaired |
Adam Auten Robert Kummerer Yuan Chih Wu |
Zipeng Wang | appendix0.gz appendix0.zip design_document0.pdf final_paper0.pdf presentation0.pptx proposal0.pdf |
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| Problem: The World Health Organization estimates that 285 million people worldwide are visually impaired, 40 million of whom are totally blind. The two major mobility aids for the visually-impaired currently are white canes and guide dogs. White canes only allow detection of objects in the direct path of the user, and are therefore very limited in information feedback. Guide dogs can interact more with the user and the environment, making them more useful in certain locations; however, most blind people still use canes at least sometimes, and many still use canes entirely, for reasons of price, care, and in case of some people, allergies. There is, then, a market niche for providing a more useful feedback device to the visually-impaired user about the state of their environment at a lower cost. Solution: For our project, we propose a wearable, hands-free device that uses a haptic feedback belt and ultrasonic rangefinders to give the wearer a sense of obstructions in their immediate surroundings. A belt of 8 narrow beam width ultrasonic range-finders worn about the midsection create a coarse 360 degree map of the surroundings, that is then communicated to the wearer through the haptic feedback belt. To further enhance spatial awareness of the wearer, we’ve noticed a common problem among many people of being unable to continuously walk in a straight line without veering in one direction. To solve that problem, our design will include a magnetometer to sense geomagnetic north, and relay that direction through the haptic belt. This would help the wearer to walk in straight lines by letting them know when they began to turn in one direction or the other; this is useful in navigating sidewalks alongside busy roads in grid-like cities, which are often the case for metropolitan areas with high amounts of traffic. This will be a user-activated mode switch, so that the user can control the occurrence of this function. As conspicuity is one of the weaknesses of both the white canes and guide dogs, we aim to keep the device as discreet as possible. The haptic belt can be worn under clothing. Power: The sensory device will necessarily be battery powered, and will need a long battery life for maximum usability. We aim for a battery life to be usable for at least 4 hours on a single charge. Uniqueness: Although this problem has been tackled before (see Blind Eye from Spring 2016), our project differentiates itself through the following points: • Haptic feedback instead of audio feedback (which we think is a better design choice, since audio feedback obstructs usage of another vital sense for a visually-impaired person) • Turning off sensor feedback until your environment changes (for ex. Prevent constant constant haptic feedback when you’re sitting with your back to a chair) • Feedback about cardinal direction (unexplored by previous projects related to this area) Components: There are ultrasonic range-finders available on DigiKey at low cost (HC-SR04). We intend to mount the microcontroller on a PCB that will act as a central processing unit for the eight ultrasonic sensors placed across the front of the belt and to drive the haptic feedback belt. The haptic feedback belt will consist of an array of 8 eccentric rotating mass actuators (ERM’s) due to their low cost and availability. These would be controlled by an haptic motor controller IC to have precise control of the stimulus and allow easy integration with the application processor. Team Members: Adam Auten (auten2) Robert Kummerer (rkummer2) Yuan Chih Wu (ywu77) |
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