Lahore student develops 'walk eye' device to help visually impaired people move without stick

LAHORE: In a major achievement, a student in Lahore has developed a ‘walk eye’ device for visually impaired people which would enable them to move freely without using their stick.  

Muhammad Ahmad Bin Zia, whose device could make it easy for blind people to walk freely, developed it while preparing his final year assignment.

Sharing the working of his hat, he said that it uses two sensors, that detect anything coming in the way of some 2.5 meters, alerting the blind people of the hurdle through vibrations.

He shared that there are separate sets of vibrations designed in the walk eye device in order to alert the visually impaired people regarding the direction of the hurdle.

“If there is a hurdle on the right side, the vibration of this side will go on; in case of the left side, the left vibrator will act while in case of a hurdle on the front side, both the vibrators will act simultaneously,” Ahmad said.

Muhammad Ahmad said that the hat will supplement the white cane so that the user can move around independently without any help from others.

“The hat does detection from a person’s waist to head. In many cases it can tell the user about the obstacle before their cane can,” he said.

Read More: Chiniot youths invent smart white cane for visually impaired

The student said that a sound mode was also developed in the device in order to alert the visually impaired man in a rush place, where vibration sensors could not perform in a better manner.

He said that the sensors used in the cap were basically used as the car parking sensors.

“I wanted to distribute it among the people suffering from vision loss free of cost and need help from the government in this regard,” he said adding that he was working on the project for the past year and it needs some more improvement.

Ahmad said the aim of the ‘walk eye’ project was to empower visually impaired people to increase their mobility.