Implantable and Wearable Devices for IoT Applications—A Prototype of Integrated Multi-Feature Smart Shoes and Glass for the Safe Navigation of Blind People

Humans are bestowed with six senses, namely, taste, smell, hearing, touching, extrasensory perception, and sight. Among these six senses that the social beings—humans got, the sense of sight is considered the most important and inevitable. The reason that the sense of vision is the most indispensable is that with this sense humans could be able to perceive their surroundings and act accordingly and helps carry out day-to-day routines without haphazard. But there are visually impaired and blind people who toil every day in their life to navigate from one place to their respective destination independently. They struggle to be self-supporting and self-reliant. They are faced with many challenges like being not aware of obtrusion like pits, immobile objects like stones, and moving vehicles all of which put their safety under question. They might get lost in their way while navigating and there is a possibility of falling when they are encountered with slippery and wet surfaces. Walking with a cane has become disadvantageous on various grounds like the cane might be damaged when it accidentally hits hard objects, one of the hands of the user must be always engaged in holding the cane. To provide an effective and efficient solution to the problems addressed by blind persons, the system proposed in this paper is designed and implemented. The system (shoes) is built in such a way to act as an integrated multi-utility product that ensures the safety of the user, helps the user traverse with a real-time navigation system with voice feedback using sensors and a voice module. The system also aims at detecting mobile and immobile ground-level obstacles, water, pits. Various sensors like Infrared sensors, ultrasonic sensors, fall detection sensor, and so on have been used for the above-mentioned purposes. Glasses are used to detect mobile obstacles like cars, trucks, which are at a certain height from the ground. Using a GPS-enabled smartphone connected wireless through Bluetooth/Wi-Fi technology to the processing unit fitted to the system notifies the location of the use when he or she experiences a fall, to the contacts connected via the Bluetooth module. The energy harnessed using piezoelectric panels is used to charge the system.