Smart Walking Cane for Enhanced Mobility and Safety of Visually Impaired Residents

This paper outlines designing and constructing an intelligent walking cane to assist visually impaired individuals. The smart walking cane employed in this paper provides advanced functionality such as object recognition, path planning, obstacle avoidance through Radar, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) detection, and navigation through the path to the desired object using wheels attached to the base of the walking cane. An overhead camera detects ArUco Markers on objects and obstacles, generating a path using the <tex xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">$\boldsymbol{A}^*$</tex> algorithm sent to the cane's motor wheels to guide the user. An RFID scanner reads object details, relayed through a Bluetooth earpiece, and a buzzer alerts the user of obstacles for safe navigation. The experimental results demonstrate accurate object recognition and path navigation so the user can locate the target object successfully. The proposed smart cane system shows an overall of 86.65 % by comparing the navigation path of a non-disabled person with a visually impaired person.