Smart Canes as Multifunctional Aids: Enhancing Navigation, Gaming, and Social Connectivity for the Visually Impaired

Individuals with visual impairment encounter significant hurdles during navigation, both indoors and outdoors. Negotiating obstacles, whether stationary or in motion, poses considerable difficulty, contributing to diminished confidence and restricted mobility. Addressing the challenges faced by visually impaired individuals, this thesis introduces a novel solution in the form of a smart cane, aimed at enhancing their mobility and independence. Leveraging advanced technology, the smart cane integrates sensors and intelligent algorithms to provide real-time feedback and navigation assistance. The research delves into the current literature surrounding indoor navigation systems and the techniques used in Smart Canes to aid users in performing tasks. In addition, the work references various related studies on assistive technologies for individuals with disabilities, such as a digital script for the deaf-blind and visually impaired and a smart phone-assisted blind stick. This research introduces an innovative smart cane architecture aimed at empowering visually impaired individuals. It integrates advanced sensors and social media connectivity to enhance accessibility and encourage physical activity. The smart cane incorporates developed algorithms for step counting, swing detection, and proximity measurement. Its comprehensive architecture includes layers for platform, communications, sensors, calculation, and user interface, providing comprehensive assistance. Hardware components feature audio-tactile interaction, input command, microphone, local storage, step count, cloud integration, and rechargeable battery. Software components include Facebook Chat API, Python Facebook API, fbchat library, and Speech Recognition library integration. The proposed smart cane offers a holistic solution to improve mobility, accessibility, and social engagement, contributing to a more inclusive society and enhancing the well-being of the visually impaired community. The experimental setup used to test the Smart Cane system and reports on its performance is also reported. The methodology section outlines the objectives of the experiment, understanding of game objectives, tutorial quality rating, gameplay engagement, and the ergonomics of the controller. These results provide insights into the performance and usability of the system. The discussion elaborates on the experimentation methodology, analysis of understanding game objectives, tutorial quality assessment, evaluation of