kinect-the-blind

The purpose of our hack is so that a blind person can attach the wearable Kinect/motor combination onto their body. How it works is that if a person is walking and is within 50 centimeters of an obstacle, the connected motors will commence whirring to let the user know that they must switch their course of direction. The Kinect utilizes infrared sensors to gauge the proximity of the objects around it, taking in images and analyzing its position with respect to the user. This way, the blind user will always be able to feel whenever he or she is approaching too close to an obstacle or an incoming obstacle may be approaching them.

As an extension, we would like to incorporate some sort of speech to text conversion (which we have already started working on) where you can call for a Lyft or Uber if you get lost. In addition, improving accuracy for incoming obstacles in addition to their speed is an another idea so that accidents can be reduced as well.

Built With

• arduino
• node.js