Resumen de Development of a motion measurement system of a long cane for Visually Impaired People in rehabilitation

K. M. Reyes Leiva, S. Sanchez Lara, M. Jaén Vargas, J. J. Serrano Olmedo

• The rehabilitation of a blind person is a systematic process where the person is dotted with tools that allow them to deal with the impairment, including the correct use of the long cane for navigation in the Orientation and Mobility training. In this process, technology as inertial measurement sensors could be included to track the motion of the cane in order to evaluate the correct use. One sensor added to the cane can provide valuable information about orientation, position, velocity and trajectory of the tip. In this research, a system was developed by adding a BNO055 inertial sensor to the lower part of the long cane in order to analyze the output with the help of Arduino, Simulink and MATLAB. A method was developed to obtain qualitative information about the movements of the long cane during the training of mobility and the reliability was tested. The tests were carried out with a real cane, in isolated situations and a controlled environment, corresponding to real techniques that will be trained during rehabilitation. The experimental results indicate that the parameters obtained in the orientation test and in the short displacement test presented a standard error ~1% in both cases and an accuracy of 98 and 97% respectively. However, for the sliding test for simulation of the diagonal technique, the difference in the value of the mean obtained with respect to the real value was 39%. Despite presenting reproducibility in tests with low standard errors, to obtain precise displacement or position value, a more complex census is required, or a new method should be developed for evaluation. The system requires further development in order to be used in the assistant program for the rehabilitation process.