Abstract

RFID Based Assistance for Bus Travel for The Blind

Author(s): B. Sridhar*, C. Amarnath, D. Logeswaran, B. Roopan and S. Santhosam

The estimated number of blind people over the world is between 40 to 45 million, special services should be provided to them in order to give them the right to live as others do. Unlike people with normal vision, it is difficult for the visually challenged persons to locate the bus stations, read the information displayed at the bus stations and also to identify the destination of the buses that arrive at the bus stations. In order to assist them to overcome all the above difficulty a solution based on RFID technology has been proposed in this present work. The proposed system consists of two important modules viz. the bus sub system and the bus station subsystem and makes use of a PIC Microcontroller for its functioning. Three different RFID tags are needed one for each bus, one for each bus station and one for each blind person. The proposed system has been developed and tested. Its performance is satisfactory and could help users to successfully board their desired buses, using the interactive communication modules. This idea also incidentally provides a potential and viable assistance even to the people with hearing impairment, by way of including suitable low cost displays in the various modules. Key words: RFID, Bus detection, Blind, Microcontroller, Travel information