Team Brian - Assistive cane for the visually-impaired

A white cane add-on system that lights up and makes noise for the visually impaired walking and crossing the street at night

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Inspiration

We were inspired by our co-designer, Brian Coppola. Brian is a college-educated, visually-impaired individual who is a strong advocate for others with disabilities. An independent adult, Brian frequently goes outside and often finds it difficult to cross the street safely at night.

What it does

Our assistive cane safety system alerts drivers to the presence of a visually impaired person when it is dark out through a system of color LEDs and an embedded speaker. The system is unique in that it (1) attaches to foldable white canes for the visually impaired with no physical alteration required, and (2) still allows for folding of the cane, making it more convenient than non-foldable options. There are three modes: off, all on, and a strobe, flashing mode that makes a noise.

At the end of the hackathon, we ended up with (1) a computer-attached prototype demonstrating the full gamut of modes (including a pager buzzer for haptic feedback for the hard of hearing), and (2) a battery-powered miniaturized on-cane prototype that controlled the lights on and off.

How we built it

We used a normal graphite cane for the visually blind and 3-D printed an enclosure to mount on the handle of the cane.

The enclosure includes openings for a switch to turn the system on and off, a momentary push-button to trigger the attention-grabbing flashing + sound mode, a speaker for sound output, a weather-proof USB charging port and a weather-proof socket for the wiring that connects the LEDs to the controller.

Inside the enclosure is a USB-rechargeable battery and embedded electronics for controlling the various functions. Coming out of the enclosure is a wire connecting to LEDs programmed to mimic the recognizable colors of a white cane (white on top, red on the bottom).

There is also reflective tape around each segment of the cane to increase the cane's visibility for cars at night, even when the system is powered off.

Challenges we ran into

Challenges we ran into included:

  • choosing the best, weatherproof lights and iterating on how best to attach them.
  • providing the right level of power to the different components, which differed between our test boards (the tiny embedded Adafruit Feather devices we worked with provided less voltage on the output pins, so we experimented with using logic-level voltage shifting to make them work when embedded on the cane itself)

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of how we fit multiple components and functions into a single small enclosure with a water-resistant encasing.

What we learned

We learned about the struggles of the visually impaired and the importance of visibility at night.

What's next for Team Brian

  • Embed the noise-making and haptic feedback mechanisms into the embedded version
  • Brian will show family and friends and also present to associations for the blind to hopefully inspire cane manufacturers to produce light-up, foldable canes that can produce sound for the blind.

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