Haptic Wearable System to Assist Visually-Impaired People in Obstacle Detection

One of the main difficulties encountered every day by visually-impaired people concerns moving and orienting themselves independently and safely in indoor and especially outdoor environments. Although several studies have been carried out to propose electronic aids to support orientation and mobility tasks, problems continue to exist. In this work, a wearable ultrasonic-based obstacle detector is proposed to give a further contribution to the field. The prototype is designed by paying particular attention to (1) the updating of the components and (2) the use by the blind users. It can be mounted on the user’s preferred model of eyeglasses and can be used with or without the traditional white cane.