Wearable Navigation Aid for Visually Impaired People Using AI

This paper presents an artificial intelligence (AI) enabled wearable navigation system developed to assist visually impaired individuals with real-time environmental awareness and obstacle avoidance. The system employs an ESP32-CAM and an ultrasonic sensor to detect obstacles and perceive the surrounding environment using YOLOv8-based object detection. Turn-by-turn navigation instructions are obtained from mapping services and converted into speech using gTTS to provide continuous voice guidance. By combining multi-sensor inputs with real-time processing, the proposed system improves user safety, autonomy, and mobility in everyday navigation.