Voice-Guided Mobile Robot System for Disabled People

Introduction

Vision is a precious gift to human beings. Vision allows people to see and understand the surrounding of the world. Nowadays, there are many different types of devices to assist or help the totally or partially blind people because of the improvement of the modern technologies and research. Those devices are smart phone, laser, ultrasonic sensors, GPS, RFID, and so on. Smart phone allows the visually impaired people to listen and hear to the voice mails, and, even write and send mails. Laser cane transmits invisible laser beam to detect the objects. Ultrasonic sensor is used to sense the distance of the obstacle. GPS system is used to provide the information regarding the location of the blind user to his family andindicate the correct way for the users. RFID is to navigate the blind people but it needs RFID flags along the user’s path (Mohajeri et al., 2011).

In the world, the totally blind persons and the partially blind people use or apply the guide dogs, human guides and the traditional mobility aids such as white canes, aluminum sticks, wood sticks and so on to avoid the obstacles. Although a few of blind people use the guide dogs, those guide dogs need the extensive training course and the fully trained dogs are so expensive and then those dogs cannot be fully believed to overcome the obstacles. Those well trained guide dogs can only be used for about five years. The human guide is also expensive for longer durations, and only the rich men can lend those people for their family member or blind person. Most of the blind people use the white cane or aluminum or wood stick in our country .The visually impaired people swing the aluminum or wood stick and the white cane around their feet to detect the existence of the obstacles near their step. Those sticks and cane have limitation because it can only detect the obstacles when those sticks and canes have contact with the disturbance. The white cane and the traditional sticks cannot sense the obstacle more than 1 meter. Those aids cannot warn to the user with voice message where the obstacle is in the user’s path until the blind user has touched and hit with the obstacle. Some incidents might lead to serious injury on the blind users. So, the blind people are requiring the advanced stick or device to walk or move safely in their surroundings (Ashiq et al., 2022; Burta et al., 2020; Chaudary et al., 2023; Fanfeng, 2010; Kalpana et al., 2020; Khan et al., 2021; Messaoudi et al., 2022; Mohapatra et al., 2018; Real & Araujo, 2019).

The main aim of this paper is to create and construct the blind stick with human voice messages depending on the ultrasonic sensors. This paper consists of four main sections: (1) obstacle detection system, (2) obstacle avoidance system, (3) voice-guided system, and (4) lighting system. This blind stick has six ultrasonic sensors to sense the obstacle not only left, right and in front of the user on the ground but also over-hanging obstacle at the level of the user’s head. Only one servo motor fixed with front wheel is used to avoid the obstacles easily to secure the user’s path. ISD2590 Chipcorder and vibration motor are applied to produce the voice messages and vibrating alert depending on the ultrasonic sensors. LDR and LDE are carried out for the lighting system to know and see where the blind stick is for the sighted people. This blind stick is useful for the blind people safety. This voice-guided system using mobile robot can be used to allow the blind people to move independently, safely and quickly among the obstacles and hazardous places (Akhil et al., 2022; Al-Fahoum, 2013; Elmannai & Elleithy, 2017; Islam et al., 2018; Rahman et al., 2019; Sumathy et al., 2020; Wei et al., 2013).