Abstract
A blind walking cane (white cane) enables visually impaired users to navigate their surroundings. Through movement and touch of the white cane, such users can detect obstacles and/or change in terrain. However, in crowded environments, environments with a lot of moving objects, weather conditions such as rain or snow, or in environments where objects are at a distance longer than the cane itself, use of a white cane may be ineffective or impractical. In such situations, the cane may not provide essential feedback in time to avoid obstacles. This disclosure describes a wearable device that uses a distance sensor such as a LiDAR or ultrasonic distance sensor to automatically detect distance to an object based on a user’s movement and to generate guidance which is provided as haptic feedback. The device can be used in standalone mode or can be used along with a white cane.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Lanning, Gabriella; Guajardo, Jaime; and Boiarshinov, Dmitrii, "Wearable Device with Distance Sensing and Haptic Feedback for Visually Impaired Users", Technical Disclosure Commons, (November 28, 2023)
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/6457