Assistive Navigation Application for Blind People using a White Cane Embedded System

The need to move independently is one of the most important factors conditioning an active life. A relative reduced number of devices and applications proved to have a real utility in this field, many of them presenting limitations and requiring improvements. The present paper proposes a system capable to assist impaired visual people to travel independently in smart cities. It is based on the enhancing of white canes with capabilities to read and interpret codes of colors special created to express previously elaborated routes for a given area. A decision part of the system compares the translated route with the real trial detected by sensors and transmits to the blind person guiding and warning coded tactile signals. The main functionalities of the system were modeled and tested in a laboratory environment, it proving to be reliable and easy to use.