Development of blind cane sensory assistance tactile display

Abstract

Tactile display refers to any human-computer periphery that can transmit information through the sense of touch. The fundamental concept behind human’s sense of touch lies in stimulating the numerous mechanoreceptors under the human skin using mechanical or electrical stimuli. These characteristics of the skin are exploited in most tactile interfaces. Therefore, to develop an effective tactile display, it is essential for us to understand how human skin’s sensors and nerves system response to external stimuli and its various modalities. Over the years, the tactile display has found its applications in many areas such as wearable communication instrument in the military operation or act as an interface for a human to interact with the virtual environment. Most of the tactile display can be categorised into three groups based on its application: sensory assistance device, haptic device and tactile information device. This project aim is to design and develop a new sensory assistance tactile display prototype, integrating it with a blind cane for assisting the blind in obstacle avoidance and enhancing product capabilities in perceiving a dynamic environment. After which, an evaluation test was conducted to study the viability of the product by comparing the result and correlating the control parameters involved with the outputs measured. The experiment analyse were used to determine any basic limitations exhibit by the tactile display prototype and recommendations were suggested to overcome the limitations and the possible scope for improvement in future works