OARC (Obstacle Avoidance and Road Crossing)

Abstract

According to a report by World Health Organization [1] there is an estimated 39 million of blind people and about 285 million who are visually impaired. I was motivated to do this research when one day I saw a blind man walking in Holborn alone and asking people for help to cross the road. There is a lot of research in regards to this problem however, it is not enough. Hence, the OARC System was created to help blind people to cross the road and get alerted before they get hit by any obstacles. The OARC System uses makeshift hardware such as Kinect helmet and vibration wrist belt. The OARC System uses Microsoft SAPI and Kinect for Windows API to solve the problem. It is written in Visual Studio C#. Nevertheless, it still is an attempt to solve the problem and I believe this research would be helpful for some other researchers considering similar project.