Project

# Title Team Members TA Documents Sponsor
29 [RFA] ProxiPole: An Electronic Walking Stick for the Visually Impaired
Arvind Kamal
Fernando Hernandez-Campos
Landon Clipp
 Anthony Caton design_document0.pdf
final_paper0.pdf
other0.tar
presentation0.pptx
proposal0.pdf
#Names and NetIDs:
Landon Clipp - clipp2
Arvind Kamal - kamal4
Fernando Hernandez - hrnndzc2

#Problem
The World Health Organisation estimates that nearly 253 million all over the globe suffer from visual impairment. The American Foundation for the Blind states that nearly 25 million people live with vision loss within the US. One can only guess the myriad of unfortunate mishaps that happen due to vision loss in the real world, be it on roads, sidewalks, construction zones, or even inside houses.

#Solution Overview
To enhance a person’s ability to perceive one's immediate environment, we suggest to enhance an already working solution that is the walking stick. The idea would be to attach an array of range finding sensors to an area near the tip of the walking stick. These sensors would feed data to microcontroller which would modulate a wearable, like a belt, with vibrating motors. These motors, placed circularly around the belt, would indicate the direction of upcoming obstacles, and the strength of the vibration would indicate the proximity. The stick will be able to detect in a wide cone of at least 30 degrees. It will also be able to detect objects that are on average within 1.5 meters of the sensors.

#Solution Components
##Physical construction
We hope to use mostly pre-made components like PVC to form the physical construction but will likely make use of some custom parts from 3D printing. (like a handle or mounting mechanism)

##Sensor Subsystem
- Laser range-finding sensors (Part # VL53L1CXV0FY/1; Quantity: 4 units)
- 3-axis gyroscope (used to determine orientation of the stick)

##Feedback Subsystem
- Belt of haptic vibrating motors and a motor driver
- Motor vibration and intensity would be determined by inputs from microcontroller
- Chirp speaker for immediate collisions and SOS

##Processing Subsystem
A microcontroller such as the ATMEGA328P will receive the data from our sensor array and gyroscope (using i2c). This data will be processed to determine detection angle and detection distance relative to the person. The microcontroller will then determine which haptic motor to activate, its intensity, and also whether or not to activate the audible alarm.

##Power Subsystem
A simple battery will be used as the main power source with regulator to 3.3v and 5v. We will use a rechargeable Lithium Ion battery.

#Criterion for Success
Our product should be able to correctly indicate direction of detection by activating the proper haptic motor. Additionally, it should be able to give intuition about the distance of the detected object by modulating the intensity of the vibrating motors. It should be able to operate consistently in both indoor and outdoor environments and detect objects in at least a 30 degree cone.

#Uniqueness
Although we were able to find a few examples of electronic walking sticks for blind people, our design is an improvement on those because we will attempt to incorporate a much wider detection angle than what is out there. Furthermore we eliminate the need for learning vibratory patterns by adding the belt which makes this more intuitive to use.

#Link to the Initial Post
https://courses.engr.illinois.edu/ece445/pace/view-topic.asp?id=27025

Smart Frisbee

Ryan Moser, Blake Yerkes, James Younce

Smart Frisbee

Featured Project

The idea of this project would be to improve upon the 395 project ‘Smart Frisbee’ done by a group that included James Younce. The improvements would be to create a wristband with low power / short range RF capabilities that would be able to transmit a user ID to the frisbee, allowing the frisbee to know what player is holding it. Furthermore, the PCB from the 395 course would be used as a point of reference, but significantly redesigned in order to introduce the transceiver, a high accuracy GPS module, and any other parts that could be modified to decrease power consumption. The frisbee’s current sensors are a GPS module, and an MPU 6050, which houses an accelerometer and gyroscope.

The software of the system on the frisbee would be redesigned and optimized to record various statistics as well as improve gameplay tracking features for teams and individual players. These statistics could be player specific events such as the number of throws, number of catches, longest throw, fastest throw, most goals, etc.

The new hardware would improve the frisbee’s ability to properly moderate gameplay and improve “housekeeping”, such as ensuring that an interception by the other team in the end zone would not be counted as a score. Further improvements would be seen on the software side, as the frisbee in it’s current iteration will score as long as the frisbee was thrown over the endzone, and the only way to eliminate false goals is to press a button within a 10 second window after the goal.