Personal Project #1

The Problem

Blind people are often held back by doing many activities in life and are forced to find ways to combat ones loss of vision. On the road simple walking sticks can be used to identify terrain alongside a guide dog who could find terrain shifts and notify the blind person about them. In skiing blind people are forced to hire guides which can cost a lot of money due to both the risk factor, and the fact that guides would have to spend their whole day guiding around. Due to this skiing is not a very accessible sport to blind people. Because of this problem I have set out to create a vest that serves as a guide for blind people traversing terrain and maybe even skiing.

The Solution

Over the past month or so I’ve spent a lot of time researching image recognition technology in hopes to implicate an identification software that could also create a safest way to a destination. Some ideas I have are to make a vest that can hold the components or to make the components to fit inside a small box able to be easily put in a backpack.

After researching possible ways to solve my problem I made my definition statement which happens to be listed below.

“When designing a device for aiding those who are visually aided in doing everyday activities such as skiing I must consider the critical problems of sensors functioning at high speeds, vest weight being light, creating a system that can analyze terrain and create the safest path, and designing haptic gloves to communicate the software’s thoughts to the user.”

The Plan

To make my prototype I will need to find time to build the device/software, learn how to code an image detection, and pathfinding software. I believe that learning how to code these softwares could take up to or well over a month so its important I do as much planning as I can in advance to make the design process of the actual prototype much quicker.

Below is a task list covering what the order of completion must be

• Research raspberry pi boards and choose which one to use
• Create a BOM and look into what components I need
• Begin software creation with component choices in mind Estimated Completion:Early April
• Test the softwares basic functionally by walking blindly
• Look for any errors in the software and make edits
• Create the CAD vest 1st iteration
• Test the efficiency of the CAD vest design
• If design is poor create a new model if not choose a light but strong material to create another prototype

Could be the end here but if I finish the walking vest beforehand I will begin to test the vest in other places such as a ski hill while making more improvements to the design.

Overall looking back on my planning its become evident that the creation of my softwares is a dangerous variable being able to both work perfectly the first time or to never work once making my life 100 times harder. I know that the sooner I begin learning how to make these complex softwares, the sooner I can begin working on areas where I have more strengths such as designing models and finding a way to best achieve minimal weight and structural integrity.

Until next time goodbye!