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3D model of Project
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Product breakdown
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Group work
Vision Nodes was built from a simple but powerful realization: for visually impaired individuals, everyday movement is not effortless—it is uncertain. Something as basic as walking through a street, avoiding obstacles, or identifying what is ahead often requires hesitation and constant caution. While technology has advanced in many areas, real-time, intuitive awareness of the surrounding environment for blind users is still limited. We wanted to address that gap in a meaningful way.
From this motivation, we developed our project, NextAid. It is an assistive system designed to enhance spatial awareness and restore confidence in movement. NextAid uses dual ultrasonic sensors placed on the left and right to detect nearby obstacles and translates proximity into intuitive vibration feedback, allowing users to physically sense their surroundings in real time. Alongside this, an AI-powered camera recognizes key environmental elements such as doors, stairs, and objects, providing an additional layer of understanding beyond distance detection. Building this system required careful integration of hardware and software, ensuring that real-time processing remains smooth, accurate, and non-overwhelming for the user. One of our biggest challenges was striking the right balance between simplicity and information—making the system intelligent enough to be useful, but minimal enough to remain intuitive.
Through this project, we were able to build a functional prototype that combines obstacle detection and environmental recognition into a unified assistive experience. More importantly, we learned that designing for accessibility is not just a technical challenge, but a human one—it requires empathy, restraint, and clarity above everything else. As Vision Nodes, our goal moving forward is to refine NextAid further by improving accuracy, reducing hardware size for wearability, and expanding recognition capabilities. Ultimately, we aim to transform it into an affordable, scalable solution that meaningfully improves independence and confidence for visually impaired individuals in their daily lives.
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