ADVANCED ROBOT FOR VISUALLY

IMPAIRED PEOPLE
(Minor Project Report)

Submitted By

Siddharth Khare
0206ec101105

In partial fulfillment for the award of the degree

Of
Bachelor of Engineering
In
Electronics and Communication Engineering

Department of Electronics and Communication

Gyan Ganga Institute of Technology & Sciences
Jabalpur (M.P.)
Rajiv Gandhi Prodyogiki Vishwavidyalaya, Bhopal (M.P.)
Nov-2013
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I sincerely express indebtedness to esteemed and revered guide Prof.

Mohammed Arif, Department of Electronics and Communication,
his/her invaluable guidance.
I am also thankful to our honorable Group Director Dr. Maneesh
Choubey and Principal Dr. B.K. Roy for providing the necessary
facilities.
I take this opportunity to express deep sense of gratitude to “Prof. P.K.
Jain”, Deputy Director, G.G.I.T.S., for his encouragement and kind
approval.
I am also thankful to my Head of Department, “Mr. Vinod Kapse”,
Professor, and, Project Coordinator “Mr. Raj Tiwari”, Asst. Prof.
Department of Electronics and Communication, for their sincere
supervision and encouragement.
We owe sincere thanks to all the faculties and technical staff of
“Electronics & Communication” for their advice and counseling time to
time.

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 BONAFIDE CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the Minor Project report entitled “Advanced Robot
for Visually Impaired People “submitted by Siddharth Khare is a
bonafide work submitted in the partial fulfillment for the award of
Bachelor of Engineering Degree from “Rajiv Gandhi Proudyogiki
Vishwavidyalaya, Bhopal (M.P)”.

Prof. Vinod Kapse Prof. P. K. Jain

Head, Dept. of Electronics and Communication Deputy Director,
GGITS, Jabalpur GGITS, Jabalpur

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 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that the Minor Project report entitled “Advanced Robot
for Visually Impaired People” submitted by Siddharth Khare is approved
for submission towards partial fulfillment of the requirement for the
award of the degree of Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and
Communication from “Rajiv Gandhi Proudyogiki Vishwavidyalaya,
Bhopal (M.P)”

Internal Examiner External Examiner

Date: Date:

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 DECLARATION

I hereby declare that Minor Project report entitled “Advanced Robot for
Visually Impaired People” which is being submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirement for the award of the degree of Bachelor of
Engineering in Electronics and Communication from “Rajiv Gandhi
Proudyogiki Vishwavidyalaya, Bhopal (M.P)” is an authentic record of
our own work done under the guidance of Mr. Mohammed Arif,
Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Gyan
Ganga Institute of Technology and Sciences, Jabalpur.

The matter reported in this project has not been submitted earlier for the
award of any other degree.

Siddharth Khare

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 ABSTRACT

Advanced robot for visually impaired people is a device used to guide

visually impaired people to dwell around. The conventional method is
the white cane which will be used to sense the surface and of the
obstacle around the blind. In this project, the white cane is attached to a
mobile platform which will have an array of sensors used to detect
obstacles.. The mobile robot will be given a predefined target to move.
The sensors will always look for any obstacles along the path. It will
avoid by an angle once the obstacle is detected. The deflection from
original path due to presence of obstacle will be controlled by
microcontroller. It will also provide instruction to the wheels to return to
the original path once the obstacle has been avoided. The feedback
signals from the optical encoders attached to the wheels are important to
determine the distance travelled by the wheels. This paper will also
discuss about the software for the obstacle avoidance and for reaching
target.

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 Table of Contents

1. Introduction 1

2. Literature Review 2-3

3. Basic block Diagram 4

3.1 Description 4
3.2Technology Used 5

4. Circuit Diagram 6-7

5. List of Components 8-13

6. Software Used 14-15

7. Result 16

8. Time and cost analysis 17

9. Application 18

10. Conclusion 19

11. Future Improvements and further scopes 20-21

12. Bibliography 22

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 INTRODUCTION

Visual impairment leads to loss of independence in performing several

routine and life-enabling tasks. According to a survey carried out in, the
task of route planning and unforeseen obstacles can severely impede the
independent travel of sightless individuals and will reduce their
willingness to travel, despite having access to the long cane or guide
dog. Difficulties were reported in detecting small obstacles in the path
of travel, uneven walking surfaces and horizontal objects at eye level or
lower for a majority of 94 visually impaired subjects interviewed. It has
been estimated that more than 30% of the blind population do not
ambulate autonomously outdoors . All these factors, therefore,
underscore the necessity of a device that aids in detecting obstacles
(structured or unstructured) and helps perform way finding.

The main objective of this research is that of designing, constructing,

implementing and testing a mobile robot to guide a blind individual to
go from one place to another autonomously collision free. This robot is
referred in this paper as Robot for Visually Impaired (ROVI). There are
five main aspects of ROVI considered in this project:

 To construct a mobile platform with suitable

serving facilities.
 To incorporate a set of ultrasonic sensors (sensor
bank) to identify the location of any obstacle.
 To incorporate a microcontroller to control the mobile platform
and to navigate the robot to move in collision-free directions
towards the planned target location.
 To test exhaustively, indoor and outdoor, and to evaluate the
performance of robot in guiding blind persons.

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 LITERATURE REVIEW

There are several methods and devices used to guide visually impaired
persons. Several research works are being performed by many
institutions throughout the
world to offer the best navigational robot in terms of cost effectiveness.
This section gives a brief review on various navigational aids for blind
individuals.

A. Guide Dog
Dogs are very capable guides for the blind, but they require extensive
training. Fully trained guide dogs cost between RM20000 and
RM50000 per year for training, breed and support; they are only useful
for about five years. Furthermore, many blind and visually impaired
people are elders and find it difficult to care appropriately another living
being. As a result, only less than 1% of the
estimated two hundred thousand visually impaired people in Malaysia
have guide dogs.

B. Kaspa
It is a more complex sonic system for the Blind. Based on technology
developed in the early 1960s by Leslie Kay, the KASPA consists of a
sweep FM ultrasound emitter and three laterally displaced sensors. The
signal received from the echo is beat against the outgoing signal to
produce audible sounds. The frequency of the sound is inversely
proportional to the range and the timbre carries information about
reflection properties of the object. The user must learn to interpret the
sounds, a process that can take several weeks of training.

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C. NavBelt

The Navbelt consists of a belt, a portable computer, and an array of

ultrasonic sensors mounted on the front of the belt. The user wears a
“fanny pack” on the abdomen and a portable computer as a backpack.
Eight ultrasonic sensors, each covering a sector of 15°, are mounted on
the front pack, providing a total scan of 120°. The computer processes
the signals that arrive from the sensors, and applies in the robotics
obstacle avoidance algorithms.

D. Mobile Robots as Guides for the Blind

One of the devices provides navigation through a mobile robot is the

Guide Cane developed by students from University of Michigan. It is a
computerized cane
which can steer blinds around obstacles. The sonar equipped, wheeled
Guide Cane resembles an upright vacuum cleaner. A semi-circular array
of sonar sensors at the bottom projects a beam in front of the Guide
Cane to detect objects. The computer which is located inside the cane
reads the information and constructs a rudimentary map of the
environment, then computes a path to guide the cane around obstacles.
To prevent the sonar beams from interfering with each other, the
sensors, which take 10 readings per second are fired using a technique
known as error-eliminating rapid ultrasonic.

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 BASIC BLOCK DIAGRAM:

DESCRIPTION:
START
NO OBSTRUCTION
POWER ON
DECTETED
(SENSORS ON)

MOVE
FORWARD
IF IN FRONT OBSTRUCTION IF BOTH FRONT AND
DETECTED.
IF LEFT VACANT MOVE
LEFT OBSTRUCTION
LEFT BY DEFUALT PRESENT MOVE RIGHT

IF AT ALL SENSORS
OBSTRUCTION DETECTED
MOVE BACK TILL FREE
SPACE STARTS.

The basic functionality of the project is to detect the obstacle using IR

sensors. Three IR sensors used on the front end of the robot. The robot
is basically a mobile platform that will dwell around to direct the
impaired. The mobile platform is attached a stick for the blind person to
hold it. As the person starts moving power is turned on.

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The three IR sensors (front left and right) will detect the obstacle in the
following manner. If no obstacle is detected in the front then the robot
will move in the front direction. In case an obstacle is detected in the
front end the robot checks for the presence of obstacle in the left side of
the robot. if no obstacle is present on the left, the robot turns to the left
guiding the person to a safer path. In case an obstacle is present on the
left as well then the robot checks for an obstacle in the right. If no
obstacle is present on the right then the robot turns to the right.
The robot keeps moving in the alternative path till the obstacle is
present. As soon as the original path becomes obstacle free the mobile
robot moves to the original path back.

TECHNOLOGY USED:

The basic concept of IR (infrared) obstacle detection is to transmit the

IR signal (radiation) in a direction and a signal is received at the IR
receiver when the IR radiation bounces
back from a surface of the object.

Here in the figure the object can be

anything which has certain shape and
size, the IR LED transmits the IR signal
on to the object and the signal is reflected
back from the surface of the object. The
reflected signal is received by an IR receiver. The IR receiver can be a
photodiode / phototransistor or a readymade module which decodes the
signal.

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 CIRCUIT DIAGRAM

L293D Interfacing Motors

The above circuit diagram shows the interfacing of microcontroller

8051 with two DC motor M1 and M2 via L293d IC. The input pins IN1,
IN2, IN3, and IN4 of L293D are connected to port 2 pins of the
microcontroller. The port 2 pins are working as Input/ Output ports pins
here.
According to the input from the microcontroller the L293d works in the
following manner:
 Pin 2 = logic 1 and Pin 7 = logic 0 | clockwise direction
 Pin 2 = logic 0 and Pin 7 = logic 1 | anticlockwise direction
 Pin 2 = logic 0 and Pin 7 = logic 0 | No rotation
 Pin 2 = logic 1 and Pin 7 = logic 1 | No rotation

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 LIST OF COMPONENTS

1) 8051 MICROCONTROLLER KIT: The P89V51RD2 is an

80C51 microcontroller with 64 kB Flash and 1024 bytes of data
RAM. A key feature of the P89V51RD2 is its X2 mode option. The
design engineer can choose to run the application with the
conventional 80C51 clock rate (12 clocks per machine cycle) or
select the X2 mode (6 clocks per machine cycle) to achieve twice the
throughput at the same clock frequency. Another way to benefit from
this feature is to keep the same performance by reducing the clock
frequency by half, thus dramatically reducing the EMI.
The Flash program memory supports both parallel programming and
in serial In-System Programming (ISP). Parallel programming mode
offers gang-programming at high speed, reducing programming costs
and time to market. ISP allows a device to be reprogrammed in the
end product under software control. The capability to field/update the
application firmware makes a wide range of applications possible.
The P89V51RD2 is also In-Application Programmable (IAP),
allowing the Flash program memory to be reconfigured even while
the application is running.
The key features are:
1) 80C51 Central Processing Unit
2) 5 V Operating voltage from 0 to 40 MHz
3) 64 kB of on-chip Flash program memory with ISP (In-System
Programming) and IAP (In-Application Programming)
4) Supports 12-clock (default) or 6-clock mode selection via
software or ISP
5) SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) and enhanced UART

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 6) PCA (Programmable Counter Array) with PWM and
Capture/Compare functions
7) Four 8-bit I/O ports with three high-current Port 1 pins (16 mA
each)
8) Three 16-bit timers/counters
9) Programmable Watchdog timer (WDT)

2) L293D IC:

L293D is a dual H-bridge motor driver integrated circuit (IC). Motor

drivers act as current amplifiers since they take a low-current control
signal and provide a higher-current signal. This higher current signal is
used to drive the motors.

L293D contains two inbuilt H-bridge driver circuits. In its common

mode of operation, two DC motors can be driven simultaneously, both
in forward and reverse direction. The motor operations of two motors
can be controlled by input logic at pins 2 & 7 and 10 & 15. Input logic
00 or 11 will stop the corresponding motor. Logic 01 and 10 will rotate
it in clockwise and anticlockwise directions, respectively.

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Enable pins 1 and 9 (corresponding to the two motors) must be high for
motors to start operating. When an enable input is high, the associated
driver gets enabled. As a result, the outputs become active and work in
phase with their inputs. Similarly, when the enable input is low, that
driver is disabled, and their outputs are off and in the high-impedance
state.

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3) IR SENSORS

The basic concept of IR(infrared) obstacle detection is to transmit the

IR signal(radiation) in a direction and a signal is received at the IR
receiver when the IR radiation bounces back from a surface of the
object.

Here in the figure the object can be

anything which has certain shape and size,
the IR LED transmits the IR signal on to
the object and the signal is reflected back
from the surface of the object. The reflected
signal is received by an IR receiver. The IR
receiver can be a
photodiode / phototransistor or a
readymade module which decodes the signal.

IR Transmitter

In general, the basic building block of any IR transmitter is modulation

of the information signal with carrier signal, because the receiver
modules which are available off-the-shelf are made for a particular
carrier frequency. So it is clear that when you chose a particular IR
receiver module, you also need to transmit the the modulated wave with
the same carrier frequency of that of a IR receiver module.

Modulating a 38 Khz carrier signal

ON state = 10ms
OFF state = 90ms

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The figure above explains the modulation process, this is similar to
OOK(ON-OFF Keying) modulation, where the carrier signal is ON for
certain period of time. When transmitting a signal for obstacle
detection, it is necessary that the carrier signal is transmitted for a short
while and remains OFF for longer period of time.

If the transmission of the carrier signal is prolonged, in other words,

instead of having a short transmission period(10 milliseconds in our
case, as explained in the figure) of carrier signal, if we have it for a long
period of time then the receiver module will treat it as a noise and
ignores receiving the transmitted signal.

IR Receiver

It is quite simple to construct a IR receiver with readily available off-

the-shelf modules. These modules are nothing but the IC packages,
referred as TSOP(Thin small-outline package). In this document, the
receiver is designed for 38 kHz carrier signal; hence the IC selected
should work for the same frequency. The IC TSOP4838 will serve as a
receiver module, which is compatible with both TTL and CMOS logic.
This means that we can directly get digital signal from the receiver
module and then connect it to the microcontroller.

The Implementation of IR receiver is explained using an LED as an

indicator.

Here in the circuit the LED blinks whenever the TSOP4838 module
receives a signal from the transmitter. The same circuit can be altered to
work with microcontroller; the circuit below has both IR transmitter and
IR receiver modules integrated with the microcontroller

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 SOFTWARE USED
1) FLASH MAGIC:
Flash Magic is an application developed by Embedded Systems
Academy to allow you to easily access the features of a microcontroller
device. With this program you can erase individual blocks or the entire
Flash memory of the microcontroller.
This application is very useful for work in the electronics field. The
main window of the program is composed of five sections where you
can find the most common functions in order to program a
microcontroller device. Using the “Communications” section you will
be able to choose the way a specific device connects to your computer.
Select the COM port to be used and the baud rate. It is recommended
that you choose a low baud rate first and increase it afterwards. This
way you will determine the highest speed with which your system
works. In order to select which parts of the memory to erase, choose
from the items in the “Erase” section. The third section is optional. It
offers you the possibility to program a HEX file. In the next section you
will be able to find different programming options, such as “verify after
programming”, “gen block checksums”, “execute” and others. When
you’re done, click the Start button that can be found in the “Start”
section. The program will start the device, and you will able to see the
progress of the operations at the bottom of the main window.

Using Flash Magic, you are able to perform different operations to a

microcontroller device, operations like erasing, programming and
reading the flash memory, modifying the Boot Vector, performing a
blank check on a section of the Flash memory and many others.

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 2) Kiel µVision3:
Keil development tools for the 8051 Microcontroller Architecture
support every level of software developer from the professional
applications engineer to the student just learning about embedded
software development.

The Keil µVision Debugger accurately simulates on-chip peripherals

(I²C, CAN, UART, SPI, Interrupts, I/O Ports, A/D Converter, D/A
Converter, and PWM Modules) of your 8051 device. Simulation helps
understand hardware configurations and avoids time wasted on setup
problems. Additionally, with simulation, we can write and test
applications before target hardware is available.

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 RESULT

In this section we present the results of some experiments conducted to

validate the effectiveness of the proposed design. We tested the robot
system in various scenarios in order to evaluate its robustness to
changes in illumination and obstacle avoidance. During our tests we
came up with practical modifications that increased both the accuracy
and the performance of our system. The first was to use the rigid geared
motor as the robot might move on the rough and uneven surfaces too.
Also the various flaws regarding the working of the project were
noticed which helped us in making the robot more effective and
appropriate.

During the experiment of robot in various scenarios we also found the

flaws which we look forward to remove in future implementations. The
first was the inability of the robot to sense a pit in the path of the robot
which might lead to trouble. Also we realized that there should be a
provision for buzzer interfacing so as to indicate the person to turn
which might be more helpful. We also realized that incase obstacles are
present on the front, left as well as the right side then the person needs
to turn back. These improvements are yet to be made and we look
forward to improve the robot so that this prototype can be used for the
designed purpose.

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 TIME & COST ANALYSIS

Time
The development of the whole completed assembly take one month.

Cost
The project is made keeping humanitarian concern thus production
when done on mass scale will be cheaper rather than individual product.
Thus to build this product we used motor cost Rs.220 , Battery bl5c(3)
costed Rs.200 , circuit components cost Rs.150.

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 APPLICATIONS

By the use of this robot the blind and visually impaired pedestrians will
be provided by the some abilities that are they will be able to navigate
from obstacles in safe and fast. That is the full obstacle avoidance for
conventional objects, furniture, other people, Sign posts etc. It can
provide ability in position determination by measuring absolute or
relative position and can notify the final or intermediate target that have
to be reached.
The better ability of the robot is guidance. That is guidance to a
predefined target, another room in a house, post office halfway across
town etc. It can direct to a specific paths, long corridors, sidewalks,
walking paths etc.

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 CONCLUSION

This project comprises the methods and experimental results in

development of software for obstacle avoidance to the mobile platform
for blind people navigation. The main task of the robot will be to guide
the blind person who holds the stick attached to robot to a target
location along a street without colliding on any obstacles. The robot has
two wheels with onboard sensor bank, encoders and batteries. The
sensor bank has 3 ultrasonic sensors. The motors are driven by a
microcontroller. The motors are connected to motor drivers. The
motor drivers are capable of controlling the direction of motor rotation.
PWM is used to control the speed of the motor rotation. Accuracy of
reaching the target is found to be approximately 0.5 meter around the
target point and locating the obstacle is within 45°. The robot can avoid
the obstacle along the path. Many exhaustive tests have been carried out
to minimise the errors during implementing the robot in real-time
application. It is envisaged that the robot can create a commercial
product very useful to the unfortunate blind people for their collision-
free navigation. The GPS calibration, the hole in the road identification
and the navigation through indoor mapping are some of the aspects
being considered for upgrading the robot facilities.

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 FURTHER IMPROVEMENTS AND FUTURE
SCOPE

Sonar – The next version of this robot prototype will be equipped with
13 sonars located in the front in a semi-circular fashion, covering 195°
ahead of the robot. Three additional sonars will be placed on top of the
housing to detect overhanging obstacles.

Brakes – Both wheels can be equipped with brakes that can be

activated by the onboard computer, for several purposes. In densely
cluttered environments, the user can be slowed down if his/her speed is
too fast. Or, when the user walks into a dead-end where no avoidance
Maneuver is possible, e.g., a closed door at the end of a corridor, the
system can immediately signal this condition by fully applying the
brakes. Brakes can be implemented using off-the-shelf, servo-actuated
disk brakes used in model race cars. These brakes are powerful and
their
Dimensions are suitable for the robot.

Wheel Configuration – We have proposed a new wheelbase design

that consists of a tricycle configuration with three unpowered wheels
[18]. This new configuration, of which we built and tested a simple
prototype, has significantly less inertia, is exposed to smaller
mechanical shocks, and insures that the sonar inclination stays
horizontal. This configuration is also much more comfortable to hold,
and it automatically adapts to the height of the user as well as to vertical
movements of his/her hand. Speech output – Speech output could be a
very helpful feature if used appropriately. It would allow the robot to
not only guide the user to a desired location, but also to provide
additional information about the environment. One useful function

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could be the instant presentation of location and orientation data.
Another useful function would be to warn a user if he/she gets too close
to an obstacle, and even telling him/her on which side the obstacle is.
Speech output could also be used instead of the brakes to ask the user to
slow down or stop.

Global Navigation – Another promising improvement consists of

adding a localization module to the robot. This would allow the user to
enter a desired target location to the system and then have the robot
automatically guide him/her to that location. Alternatively, the system
could learn a desired path by recording path segments during an initial
“lead-through” run with a
sighted person.

Computer vision – The main problem of the current robot prototype is

its sensor performance outdoors. The sensors are unable to detect
important features such as the borders of a sidewalk. Computer vision
seems to be the most promising approach to solve this problem.
Computer vision could also be used for other purposes, like
localization.

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 BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. The Guide Cane — Applying Mobile Robot Technologies to Assist

the Visually Impaired by Iwan Ulrich1 and Johann Borenstein2,
Member, IEEE

2. Robotics-Based Obstacle-Avoidance Systems for the Blind and

Visually Impaired by Shraga Shoval1, Iwan Ulrich2 and Johann
Borenstein3.

3. Bissitt, D. and Heyes, A. D., “An Applicationof Biofeedback in the

Rehabilitation of theBlind.” Applied Ergonomics, Vol. 11, No. 1,
pp.31-33.

4. Nicholas G.B., SYPROS T., “BIO-ENGINEERING FOR PEOPLE

WITH DISABILITIES”, IEEE Journal, ROBOTICS AND
AUTOMATION – March 2003

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