© 20XX JETIR Month 201X, Volume X, Issue X www.jetir.

org (ISSN-2349-5162)

Arduino Based Smart Blind Stick

1
Aayush Saini, 2Mrs. Pooja Sharma, 3hmmm
Student, 2Assistant Professor, 3Student
1

Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering

Dronacharya College of Engineering, Gurugram, India
________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Abstract : The rapidly increasing population increases the waste being generated on daily basis. Garbage is a very serious issue in
the current scenario. Garbage is increasing day by day in a very rapid manner. Due to the increase in population, there is also an
increase in urbanization and industrialization which in turn increases the waste/garbage. Due to less management, all the garbage
is dumped into landfills without segregating it. Even the segregation which is done by rag pickers is time-consuming and doing so
has a bad effect on the health of those people who are exposed to such wastes. The primary point of this paper is to review the
automatic garbage segregator.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

INTRODUCTION

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) 285 million people are visually impaired worldwide, 39 million are
blind and 246 have low vision. About 90% of the world’s visually impaired live in developing countries.

Blindness is a very common disability among the peoples throughout the world. The smart stick comes as a proposed solution to
enable them to identify the world. Nowadays, visually impaired person suffer from serious visual impairments preventing them
from travelling independently. Accordingly, they need to use a wide range of tools and techniques to help them in their mobility.
One of these techniques is orientation and mobility specialist who helps the visually impaired and blind people and trains them to
move on their own independently and safely depending on their other remaining senses.

Recently, many techniques have been developed to enhance the mobility of blind people that rely on signal processing and sensor
technology. However, all existing systems inform the blind of the presence of an object at a specific distance in front of or near to
him. Information about the object characteristics can create additional knowledge to enhance space manifestation and memory of
the blind. To overcome the above mentioned limitations, this work offers a simple, efficient, configurable electronic guidance sys-
tem for the blind and visually impaired persons to help them in their mobility regardless of where they are, outdoor or indoor.

The originality of the proposed system is that it utilizes an embedded vision system of three simple ultrasonic sensors and brings
together all reflective signals in order to codify an obstacle through PIC microcontroller (Arduino Uno R3). Hence, in addition to
distance the proposed guidance system enables the determination of two main characteristics of the obstacle which are material
and shape.

AIM OF THE PROJECT

There are many devices for visually impaired people. This project is also an attempt to develop an aid for visually impaired
persons. This project is a smart stick which is capable of detecting any obstacle, detect water and corners and even allow the user to
find the stick if anyhow missed by the user by pressing a remote switch. The device is designed with an intention to sort out
common issues faced by the blind people while using traditional sticks. With the electronics embedded within the stick, it became a
smart stick with the functionalities mentioned stated as:
● To develop a prototype hardware for modern blind stick.
● To help the blind people navigate the route at their best.
● To reduce the risk of injuries and lost for the visually impaired person.

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● To creating a suitable software for the visually impaired person.

BLOCK DIAGRAM

Working: The Arduino board at the smart stick manages the functionality of the entire device. The board manages the following
four functions implemented in the project.
3.1.1 Obstacle detection
The obstacle detection is done by the Ultrasonic sensor. For reading data from the ultrasonic sensor, first a pulse has to be sent to
the trigger pin of the sensor and then the analog voltage is read from the echo pin. The analog voltage is converted to digital
reading using inbuilt ADC channel and converted to distance measurement using the formulae stated above. If the distance
measured by the ultrasonic sensor is detected less than 10 cm, a HIGH pulse is passed at the pin connected to the buzzer. The
pulse lasts for an infinite time until the user gets away from the obstacle.
3.1.2 Light detection
The light detection is done by the LDR sensor and is used to detect the dark places. The sensor connected to a voltage divider
circuit outputs an analog voltage at the interface controller pin. The analog voltage is read and digitized using an inbuilt ADC
channel. The analog Read() function is used to read analog voltage at the controller pin.
3.1.3 Water detection
The water indicator circuit operates by triggering the base of the switching transistor. When the stick steps on water, the metal
strips are short-circuited by the water triggering a pulse at the base of the transistor. As the transistor is triggered, the VCC at the
collector pin is shorted to the ground through the emitter pin and a LOW logic is passed at the pin 3 of the Arduino.
3.1.4 Stick location detection
If anyhow the user loses the stick, he can press the remote switch which set the D3 bit of the RF encoder to HIGH. The same logic
is relayed at the D3 bit of the RF decoder and passed to pin 8 of the Arduino. On receiving a HIGH logic at the pin, the Arduino
sends a pulse at the buzzer which lasts for a variable duration depending upon the distance of the remote from the stick

Flowchart:

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Technological Specification:

 Arduino Uno
 Ultrasonic Sensor
 Water Indicator Switch
 LDR Sensor
 Buzzer

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Arduino Uno: The Arduino Pro Mini is a microcontroller board based on the ATmega328. It has 14 digital input/output pins (of
which 6 can be used as PWM outputs), 6 analog inputs, an on-board resonator, a reset button, and holes for mounting pin headers.
A six pin header can be connected to an FTDI cable or Sparkfun breakout board to provide USB power and communication to the
board. The Arduino Uno is intended for semi-permanent installation in objects or exhibitions. The board comes without pre-
mounted headers, allowing the use of various types of connectors or direct soldering of wires.

It is programmed by Arduino IDE using embedded. The Hardware board is evolved by way of Italy based totally hardware organ -
isation Arduino.

Each of the 14 digital pins on the Pro Mini can be used as an input or output, using pinMode, digitalWrite, and digitalRead func-
tions. They operate at 3.3 or 5 volts (depending on the model). Each pin can provide or receive a maximum of 40 mA and has an
internal pull-up resistor (disconnected by default) of 20-50 kOhms.

Ultrasonic Sensor: The ultrasonic sensor works on the principle of echo of sound waves. When a HIGH pulse of 10 u sec is
passed to the trigger pin of the sensor, it transmits eight 40 KHz waves of HIGH Sonic Pulse shots back to back. A High pulse
signal is out from the echo pin as the ultrasonic wave is transmitted. This wave, when colliding with an obstacle, is reflected back
and detected by the sensor.

On detecting the wave again, the High pulse signal from 16 the echo pin of the sensor is terminated. The signal received from the
echo pin is analog in nature. The distance from the obstacle can be measured by measuring the high time of the echo pin. This is
the time between the transmission and reflection back of the sonic wave.

Water Indicator Switch: It is built on the principle water being a good conductor of electricity. There are two metal strips used
of which one is attached to the base of the stick and another 1 mm above the base of the stick. The metal strip above the base of
the stick is connected to the base of a BC-548 switching transistor and another metal strip attached at the base of the stick is con -
nected to a potentiometer connecting to the ground. The potentiometer helps in calibrating the water sensor.

The collector pin of the transistor is connected to the pin 3 of the Arduino board and the VCC. The emitter of the transistor is
grounded. When the water is detected, the base of the transistor is triggered and the VCC at the pin 3 of Arduino is short-circuited
to the ground. Otherwise, the pin keeps receiving a HIGH logic.

LDR: The LDR sensor is used to identify the dark and lighted places. The LDR sensor is connected to the A0 pin of the Arduino
board. The sensor is connected in a voltage divider circuit.

The LDR provides an analog voltage which is converted to digital reading by the inbuilt ADC of the controller .

Buzzer: The buzzer is activated as any obstacle is detected by the ultrasonic sensor, the wet place is detected by the water sensor,
dark spots are detected by the LDR sensor or the missing alert is passed by the RF circuit.

Advantages of Proposed Project:

Portability: Due to it’s compact structure and light weight, it can be easily be carried around.

Cost: It consists of very basic components making it cost effective.

Simple: Maintenance as the Project deals with the software embedded C, so maintenance will be easy

Conclusion: The proposed system can reduce the number of risk and injuries for the visually impaired person when walking at
public. Nowadays, even at a young age experience the visually impairment. This thing cannot be taken so lightly as they know
how much risk it could be. If the number of risk and injuries increase rapidly, the kid or the person will lose their spirit to walk
independently. The Modern Blind Stick acts as a basic platform for the coming generation of more aiding devices to help the
visually impaired to navigate safely both indoor and outdoor. It is effective and affordable. It leads to good results in detecting the
obstacles on the path of the user in a range of two meters. Though the system is hard-wired with sensors and other components,
it's light in weight. Further aspects of this system can be improved via wireless connectivity between the system components,
thus, increasing the range of the ultrasonic sensor and implementing a technology for determining the speed of approaching
obstacles.

Future Scope: The Smart Stick acts as a basic platform for the coming generation of more aiding devices to help the visually
impaired to be more safe. It is effective and afford. It leads to good results in detecting the obstacles lying ahead of the user in a
range of four meter. This system offers a low-cost, reliable, portable, low-power consumption and robust solution for navigation
with obvious short response time. Though the system is hard wired with sensors and other components, it's light in weight.
Further aspects of this system can be improved via wireless connectivity between the system components, thus, increasing the

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range of the ultrasonic sensor and implementing a technology for determining the speed of approaching obstacles. While
developing such an empowering solution, visually impaired and blind people in all developing countries are on top our priority.

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