Design and Implementation of an Intelligent Assistive System for Visually Impaired People for Aerial Obstacle Avoidance and Fall Detection

This paper proposes an intelligent assistive system based on wearable smart glasses and an intelligent walking stick for visually impaired people to achieve the goals of aerial obstacle avoidance and fall detection. The proposed assistive system comprises wearable smart glasses, an intelligent walking stick, a mobile device app, and a cloud-based information management platform. Visually impaired people can wear the proposed wearable smart glasses and hold the proposed intelligent walking stick to detect aerial obstacles and fall events on roads. Moreover, the proposed intelligent walking stick can vibrate to guide visually impaired people to avoid aerial obstacle collision accidents. Experimental results show that the proposed system can detect aerial obstacles within 3 meters, and the average accuracy of fall detection reaches up to 98.3%. Furthermore, when visually impaired people experience a fall event, an urgent notification is immediately sent to their family members or caregivers.