The white cane is one of the most visible aids for people with visual impairments and helps them to navigate their way through the world. Research from the Stanford University Intelligent Systems Laboratory has taken cues from the world of autonomous transportation to develop an augmented cane that helps users better detect and identify objects while navigating routes both indoors and out.
So-called smart canes are often extremely expensive, with many costing around $6,000. They can also weigh up to 22kg so are not particularly practical to use. They also have limited smart capabilities and can only detect objects immediately in front of the user.
Technical improvements
By contrast, the new device weighs in at less than a kilogram and by using open-source software and off-the-shelf parts costs just $400. By making the technology that much more accessible, the researchers hope it will open up the market to more of the 250 million or so people with impaired vision globally.
“We wanted something more user-friendly than just a white cane with sensors,” they say. “Something that cannot only tell you there’s an object in your way, but tell you what that object is and then help you navigate around it.”
The cane is fitted with the same kind of LIDAR technology used in autonomous vehicles to allow it to gage the distance to nearby obstacles. It’s also equipped with accelerometers, GPS, magnetometers, and a gyroscope, with the sensors allowing the cane to monitor not only the user’s position but their speed and direction too.
It uses artificial intelligence to help navigate its surroundings, with approaches such as visual serving and simultaneous localization and mapping deployed. The cane also has a motorized wheel attached to the tip that maintains contact with the ground. It’s capable of gentling nudging the user left or right, with inbuilt navigation able to guide the user to precise locations.
Put to the test
The cane was put to the test with users at the Palo Alto Vista Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired, with both visually impaired people and blindfolded sighted people asked to complete a range of everyday navigation challenges.
“We want the humans to be in control but provide them with the right level of gentle guidance to get them where they want to go as safely and efficiently as possible,” the researchers explain.
The cane produced strong results, with the walking speed for users growing by around 20% compared to a standard white cane. What’s more, the team hopes that the open-source nature of the product will make it easier to bring to market at scale.
“We wanted to optimize this project for ease of replication and cost. Anyone can go and download all the code, bill of materials, and electronic schematics, all for free,” they say.
Suffice to say, the project is purely at the prototype stage at the moment so has a lot of work to do before it’s ready for the market, so the team is looking for industrial partners that can help them to improve the design and scale-up production.
