The Blind Guiding Robot

The blind guiding robot is a novel device designed to help blind or visually impaired users navigate safely. It belongs to serving robot category. It detects the environment information by the many kinds of sensors. And it sends the information to the blind, and helps him/her know the environment. Throughout the world, the number of blind is numerous, and the blind have to use 60% abilities of sensory. Designing a sort of practical blind guiding robot to help the visual impaired persons has great significance.According to the advantages and disadvantages in the blind guiding robot at home and abroad, a portable and reasonable general scheme is designed. The walking mechanism of the robot is the wheel-structure. It has one steering wheel which is driven by the motor and two universal wheels. The steering wheel controls the marching direction of the robot. The progressive power of robot is provided by the user. A microprocessor is used to control the behaviors of the robot. And the robot detects the environment with four types of sensors including Ultrasonic Sensor, Infrared Sensor, the Vision Sensor, and a Voice Prompt.The theory of Finite State Machine is introduced, the modeling and simulation of the logic of the time sequence of the input control is carried out with MATLAB/Stateflow producing the logic of the time sequence that can be controlled. This logic has provided theoretical basis that can be used in the designing of the robot. The hardware circuit is designed, the program is compiled, and the disposal the feedback information of the image is also done in the paper.The prototype of the robot is developed and the experimental model including pavement detection, obstacle recognition, trajectory tracking, and man-machine cooperation is carried out. The actual movement data of the robot is obtained. Compared to academic data, the system is feasible.