Development of an Intelligent Cane for Visually Impaired Human Subjects People with visual disabilities are often dependent on external assistance which is provided by either humans, trained dogs, or other special electronic devices for decision making but there are certain limitations to these aids. Hence, an intelligent white cane is developed for visually challenged people which makes use of HRSO4 ultrasonic sensors to detect any obstacle that lies in the range of the the sensor and determine its distance. The ultrasonic sensor has range up to 450 meters so that any object lying within this range can be easily detected and the warning signal is provided using the buzzer which gives beeping signals in order to alert the user for prompt action. Also, an intelligent technique of object detection and classification using the web camera which captures the image and hence classifies it is being used. The classification obtained is in the form of text which is further converted to audio signal using texttospeech conversion which is implemented in Python using Espeak open source library.

A MultiSensor Cane Can Detect Changes in Gait Caused by Simulated Gait Abnormalities and Walking Terrains Due to the increasing rates of chronic diseases and an aging population, the use of assistive devices for ambulation is expected to grow rapidly over the next several years. Instrumenting these devices has been proposed as a noninvasive way to proactively monitor changes in gait due to the presence of pain or a condition in outdoor and indoor environments. In this paper, we evaluated the effectiveness of a multisensor cane in detecting changes in gait due to the presence of simulated gait abnormalities, walking terrains, impaired vision, and incorrect cane lengths. The effectiveness of the instrumented cane was compared with the results obtained directly from a shankmounted inertial measurement unit. Results from 30 healthy participants obtained while simulating gait abnormalities and walking over different terrains demonstrated the ability of the cane to reliably and effectively discriminate among these walking conditions. Moreover, the results obtained while walking with impaired vision and incorrect cane lengths indicate the ability of cane to detect changes in gait during these scenarios as well.