A Smart Infrared Microcontroller-Based Blind Guidance System

Table 1

Existing wearable blind guidance systems.

System type	System name	Reference	Year	Country	Signal input	Signal output	Advantages	Disadvantages
Sonar systems	NavBelt	[5]	1998	USA	Ultrasonic	Auditory display	Can provide range of information of the obstacle	Cannot provide precise information such as shape and motion state of obstacles, and also cannot make judgments to the travel orientation
	People sensor	[6]	1998	USA	Ultrasonic	Vibrotactile cues
	3D space perceptor	[7]	2003	Canada	Laser	Auditory display
	Navigation system based on optical peacans	[8]	2001	Japan	Infrared signal	Auditory display
Camera based systems	v0ICe	[9]	1992	Netherlands	CCD camera	Auditory display	It provides information not only about obstacles along the traveled path; Assists the user in selecting the preferred travel path; It can capture whole environment information; It can use advanced image processing algorithm to train complex data	larger size, higher cost relatively, and it need two cameras so as distance detection algorithms is more complex than sonar-based ETAs
	Tyflos	[10]	2001	USA	Camera and laser scanner	Auditory display
	NAVI	[11]	2007	Malaysia	CCD camera	Auditory display
	AudioMan	[12]	2007	China	CCD camera	Auditory display
	SoundView	[13]	2009	China	CCD camera	Auditory display