Robust location aware emergency button for blind stick navigator with obstacle detection

Abstract

The blind and visually impaired people required assistance in their movement. They normally walk using a stick that provide them some sense of direction. During emergency situations, they have difficulties to ask for help or to contact their guardians and they have to depend on other people around them. Thus, this project proposes to build a blink stick with emergency response button with current technology by integrating component such as GPS, GSM, and Bluetooth (SIM808) that connects them to their guardians. Once the emergency button is activated, a SOS message with a link to the blind location is sent to enable the guardian to response to the situation. Thus, the response time of the SOS message is crucial to ensure they receive help as soon as possible. Therefore, this study evaluates the response time of the SOS messages of different service providers to see how long it would take from the time it is activated from the blind stick to reach the guardians and caretakers of the blind. Local Telecommunication service providers include companies such as Maxis, Digi, U Mobile and Celcom. The proposed “Blind Stick Navigator” is a blind assistance tool that originated from the traditional white cane which is upgraded by current technology. It is inarguable improvement from previous prototypes of blind assistance tools. The response time of SOS messages will be tested in different fields and places such as buildings, indoor and outdoor both with movements. The analysis of the result will be provided to recommend suitable network service providers based on selection technique for the blind people. This research output can also be extended for people have emergency situation such as heart attack, high blood pressure people and diabetes coma. we have explained different experiment scenario with the experiment results including the area of experiments, variation of weather and distance. setup during the experiments, time of the experiments, duration of time, number of samples, distance between ultrasonic sensors and obstacles, Results of different experiments have been measured and signal strength values are collected for the comparison. We have presented the comparison of signal strength in 3 different areas. Experiments results gives a clear indication that service provider can provide better transmission coverage and some places can affect signal transmission process. These experiments were conducted with the proposed selection algorithm. The system in this experiment we added our selection algorithm and slotted 2 SIM808 in the hardware part to record which service provider was chosen that was based on stronger signal strength in order to send the message. The selection algorithm automatically chooses the service provider without any intervention from the user The selection algorithm chooses between two service providers to send SOS messages. The experiments are performed for 4 service providers’ in different places