Review: an AI-Powered Smart Device for Enhancing Mobility and Independence in Visually Impaired Individuals

EasyChair Preprint 10543

Abstract

Physical disability has affected many people's lives across the world. One of these disabilities that strongly affects a large category of people is visual loss. Blind people often face difficulties moving around freely, such as when crossing the street, reading, driving, or socializing. They often rely on using certain aid devices to reach certain places or perform any other daily activities, such as walking sticks. There is ongoing scientific research into rectifying blindness, but it must go a long way to achieve the solution. Also, there is research that unleashes the ideas of assisting the blind but lacks in technological aspects of implementation. This research project aims at helping blind people of all categories achieve their day-to-day tasks easier using a smart device. By using artificial intelligence and image processing, this smart device can detect faces, colors, and different objects. The detection process is manifested by notifying the visually impaired person through either a sound alert or vibration. Additionally, this study presents a palpable survey that entails visually impaired people from the local community. Subsequently, the project uses both OpenCV and Python for programming and implementation. This project prototype investigates the algorithms that are used for detecting objects. Also, it demonstrates how this smart device could detect certain physical objects and how it could send a warning signal when faced with any obstacles.

Keyphrases: AI, Blindness, biomedical field

@booklet{EasyChair:10543,
  author    = {Hesham Mostafa},
  title     = {Review: an AI-Powered Smart Device for Enhancing Mobility and Independence in Visually Impaired Individuals},
  howpublished = {EasyChair Preprint 10543},
  year      = {EasyChair, 2023}}