www.ijsret.org 1137 International Journal of Scientific Research Engineering & Technology (IJSRET), ISSN 2278 – 0882 Volume 3, Issue 8, November 2014 DESIGN OF MICROCONTROLLER BASED VIRTUAL EYE FOR THE BLIND Pooja Sharma 1 , Mrs. Shimi S. L. 2 and Dr. S.Chatterji 3 1 ME Scholar, Electrical Engineering Department, NITTTR, Chandigarh 2 Assistant Professor, Electrical Engineering Department, NITTTR, Chandigarh 3 Head of the Department, Electrical Engineering Department, NITTTR, Chandigarh ABSTRACT Blindness is a state of lacking the visual perception due to physiological or neurological factors. The partial blindness represents the lack of integration in the growth of the optic nerve or visual centre of the eye, and total blindness is the full absence of the visual light perception. In this proposed work, a simple, cheap, friendly user, virtual eye will be designed and implemented to improve the mobility of both blind and visually impaired people in a specific area. The proposed work includes a wearable equipment consists of head hat, mini hand stick and foot shoes to help the blind person to navigate alone safely and to avoid any obstacles that may be encountered, whether fixed or mobile, to prevent any possible accident. The main component of this system is the ultrasonic sensor which is used to scan a predetermined area around blind by emitting-reflecting waves. The reflected signals received from the barrier objects are used as inputs to Arduino microcontroller. The microcontroller carry out the issued commands and then communicate the status of a given appliance or device back to the earphones using Raspberry pi speech synthesizer. The proposed system is cheap, fast, and easy to use and an innovative affordable solution to blind and visually impaired people in third world countries. Keywords: ultrasonic sensors, arduino microcontroller, raspberry pi speech synthesizer, headphone. I. INTRODUCTION Vision is a beautiful gift to human beings by GOD. Vision allows people to perceive and understand the surrounding world. However a World Health Organisation survey made in 2010, estimated 285.389 million people with visual impairment across the globe. These visually impaired people face the problems of orientation and mobility in an unknown environment. Many efforts have been made to improve their mobility by use of technology [1]. Total blindness is the complete lack of form and visual light perception and is clinically recorded as NLP, an abbreviation for "no light perception”. Blindness is frequently used to describe severe visual impairment with residual vision. Those described as having only light perception have no more sight than the ability to tell light from dark and the general direction of a light source [2]. Many people suffer from serious visual impairments preventing them from travelling independently. Accordingly, they need to use a wide range of tools and techniques to help them in their mobility. One of these techniques is orientation and mobility specialist who helps the visually impaired and blind people and trains them to move on their own independently and safely depending on their other remaining senses. Another method is the guide dogs which are trained specially to help the blind people on their movement by navigating around the obstacles to alert the person to change his/her way. However, this method has some limitations such as difficulty to understand the complex direction by these dogs, and they are only suitable for about five years. The cost of these trained dogs is very expensive, also it is difficult for many of blind and visually impaired persons to provide the necessary care for another living being [3]. There is an international symbol tool of blind and visually impaired people just like the white cane with a red tip which is used to enhance the blind movement. The walking cane is a simple and purely mechanical device dedicated to detect static obstacles on the ground, uneven surfaces, holes and steps via simple tactile-force feedback. This device is light, portable, but range limited to its own size and it is not usable for dynamic obstacles detection neither than obstacles not located on the floor [4]. Recently, many techniques have been developed to enhance the mobility of blind people that rely on signal processing and sensor technology. These called electronic travel aid (ETA) devices help the blind to move freely in an environment regardless of its dynamic changes. According to the literature, ETAs are mainly classified into two major aspects: sonar input (laser signal, infrared signals, or ultrasonic signals) and camera input systems (consists mainly of a mini CCD camera).The way these devices operate just like the radar system that uses ultrasonic fascicle or laser to identify height, the direction, and speed of fixed and moving objects. The distance between the person and the obstacles is measured by the time of the wave travel. However, all existing systems inform the blind of the presence of an object at a specific distance in front of or near to him. These details permit the user to