RFID based indoor blind aid system

• Main Author: Yap, Yik Qi
• Other Authors: Lee Peng Hin
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/65689
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Nowadays, blind aid navigation system becomes more and more important for the blinds to recognize surroundings. There are white canes, guide dog and sighted guide to help the blinds to overcome these problems, but most of them are only applicable in outdoor area. Even GPS (Global Positioning System) was considered to be used as indoor navigation system. However, such technology are too expensive and unsuitable for indoor environment. Therefore, several technologies have been invented to aid the independent walking of the blinds inside a building and one such technology is the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) system. The author proposed a RFID-based indoor navigation system for the blinds to locate themselves and find their ways out of the building. The system consists of a RFID system (reader, tags and software program), a speech processor and two buttons for user input. It is designed to be as simple as possible and inexpensive so that it would not generate extra installation cost to the building owner. At the end of the project, the author built a prototype based on the design and did experiments for testing purposes. From the experimental results, problems such as short reading range of RFID reader and low memory of speech processor are identified. Fortunately, the above mentioned problems were fixed with suitable solutions. The usage of grab bar installed on the wall not only reduce the distance between reader antenna and tags, it also increases the sense of security of the blinds when they are in a strange environment.