Walking navigation system for the blind person

Blind persons suffer much inconvenience in walking because it is not comfortable and not easy to get information about surrounding environment. In this paper, we propose a silent walking navigation system to guide blind person without noise to nearby people. According to the distance, we can divide the proposed system into two parts. The long range and surrounding information can be found by the PDA (personal digital assistant) containing navigation map, GPS (global positioning system) and a wireless Bluetooth earphone. And the short range information can be gathered by the white stick, ultrasonic sensor and vibrator. For the long range and the surrounding information, GPS receiver sends the position information to the PDA that contains the digital map and produces the navigation data. Next, the TTS (text to speech) program can convert the text information to the audible speech information. This information about area information and routes is finally transmitted to the earphone of the blind person through Bluetooth communication. For the short range information, ultrasonic sensor on white stick detects obstacles and delivers this information to vibrator to alarm the danger about obstructions. Walking tests are made in town and campus. Experimental results show the blind person can walk safer and more correctly. (4 pages)