Ikshana: Intelligent Assisting System for Visually Challenged People

People with visual impairment experience numerous difficulties in their everyday life. With the advancements in technologies, many developers have engineered various devices and aids for visually challenged people. However, many such assistive devices fall short of the user requirements concerning level of support and price. This paper presents Ikshana for visually challenged people, which intends to assist them with multiple everyday tasks using the advantage of an affordable and wearable design. Ikshana is a Sanskrit origin noun, which means sight. Ikshana, as a product, serves as a vocalized assistant which implements features like image processing, text detection and recognition, face identification, currency denomination recognition, and obstruction detection. The text reader system employs OCR software to help interpret the printed texts and online articles. The hardware architecture comprises a Raspberry pi 3B model as the processing unit, Raspberry Pi camera, buttons, and ultrasonic sensors. As a narrating agent, the headphone directs the audio output to the recipient.