Smart ‘Bat’ Cane for the Blind And Deaf

Prof Mahmoud Moghavvemi, at the University of Malaya www.um.edu.my , has designed a gadget aimed at facilitating the movement of visually impaired people.

The product is the Comprehensive Electronic Travel Aid for the Visually Impaired, or easier said, “the smart cane.” The cane uses “bat technology” that sends out ultrasound signals. “When the signal hits an object, part of it bounces back. We take the received signal, strengthen it and we have a system in the cane that can translate it into distance - how far the object is from the cane,” explains Moghavvemi.

When users approach an object less than 10 or 12 feet away, a pre-recorded voice says “watch out,” closer than that and it says “beware” and when they are about to hit something it says, “danger.” If the user is deaf as well, the cane has a vibration mode that will alert the users when they are about to bump into something.

The cane comes with a bus number recognition feature. For this to work, a small transmitter needs to be inserted in buses and set according to the bus number. When the bus approaches a stop, the number is transmitted to a receiver in the cane via radio frequency. Users only have to program the number of the buses they want in their receiver and the cane will do the rest.

Source: The Star