Indonesian Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Vol. 11, No. 3, September 2018, pp. 848~856 ISSN: 2502-4752, DOI: 10.11591/ijeecs.v11.i3.pp848-856  848 Journal homepage: http://iaescore.com/journals/index.php/ijeecs Design and Analysis of a Smart Blind Stick for Visual Impairment Zulkhairi Mohd Yusof 1 , Md Masum Billah 2 , Kushsairy Kadir 3 , Muhamad Amirul Sunni Bin Rohim 4 , Haidawati Nasir 5 , M. Izani 6 , A. Razak 7 1,2,3,4,5 Universiti Kuala Lumpur (UniKL), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 6,7 Visual & Digital Production Dept., College of Architecture, Effat University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia Article Info ABSTRACT Article history: Received Apr 21, 2018 Revised Apr 24, 2018 Accepted Jun 14, 2018 For a long time, visually impaired person uses a white cane to guide their way when travel outside. The white cane has been useful for the blinds in improving their mobility but unfortunately the white cane has its limitation. One of the shortcomings of the white cane is that, it could only detect the obstacles that are within the contact ranges of the white cane. This problem sometimes could cause the blind person to be in trouble because of insufficient time to detect and warn new obstacles in front of the blind person. This research proposes a walking stick system that has two functions; to classify an obstacles height whether it is low or high and to detect a front hole. The ability to detect the height of an obstacle will help the visually impaired to either step over or avoid the obstacle. The ability to detect a hole should help the visually impaired to avoid it in time. The walking stick will use two ultrasonic sensors for the detection of obstacle height, and a laser sensor for the detection of hole. A controller will be used to monitor and analyze the data from the sensors and feedback to the user through a vibration sensor and buzzer. The algorithm to differentiate the height of obstacles is working well and it is able to differentiate high or low obstacles. The laser ranging sensor has successfully been tested for hole detection. Therefore, the walking stick with ultrasonic and laser sensors will help more visually impaired to move around much faster and feeling more safer due to improved warning system for their movement. Keywords: Hole Detection Smart Blind Stick Visual Impaired Copyright © 2018 Institute of Advanced Engineering and Science. All rights reserved. Corresponding Author: Md Masum Billah, Universiti Kuala Lumpur (UniKL), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Email: drmdmasum@unikl.edu.my 1. INTRODUCTION Visually impaired people are mostly suffered from the brain information processing inactivity due to the lack of visual input to the brain [1]. Therefore, it results the difficulties for the blind to set the way out orientation [2]. They are unable to move according to their expected direction. In indoor navigation they cannot depends on the smart system with GPS to find out the way as the weakness of GPS signal, similarly they also get stuck to set their way out in outdoor environment if it is surrounded by low height obstacles and holes [3]. Researches show that visual impaired person can walk using smart sensory devices [4-9]. However, they failed to provide hole detection features for the blind. A productive, innovative and efficient smart gadget attached with separated sensors can serve visually impaired help perceptibly hand-off the data back to the user. Innovation must serve and keep on advancing the welfare of these blind people. Individuals are frequently confined to utilizing a smart stick as their premier gadget for indoor and outside route [10-12]. This strategy works when clients touch objects, enabling them to perceive that they are moving toward something [13]. A stick enables the client to