Visioneer Environmental Sensing Glasses for the Visually Impaired

While those who are visually impaired have some tools to help sense the world around them, traditional methods such as guide dogs and assistive canes have inherent limitations. New alternatives like wearable electronics are starting to filter into the market, but their cost remains quite high — in the $2000 range. As seen here, another possible option is the Raspberry Pi-based Visioneer system, which attaches to a pair of normal sunglasses.

Aside from the pair of sunglasses, the Visioneer includes two cameras, a Pi Zero, sensors, and bone conduction transducers. (📷: MakerVisioneer)

While still in development, the novel idea behind this device is that using an onboard accelerometer, it can tell whether someone is walking or standing still, and even whether the the user’s head is rotating back and forth. Instead of a speech recognition system, this situational information is then used to determine what audio feedback to provide.

Visioneer provides traffic information and obstacle avoidance for the visually impaired. (📷: MakerVisioneer)

Environmental viewing is done via a pair of NOIR infrared camera units, and the resulting images are processed with OpenCV, along with a neural netowrk of traffic-related images. A secondary LIDAR unit is used for short range obstacle sensing, positioned in the middle of the enhanced glasses.

If you’re interested in the project, check out the assembly process in the video seen here, or see the project’s code on GitHub. Hopefully this will continue to develop into something truly helpful!