Our aim is to help road safety to be more inclusive with people with disabilities. Our main idea is the creation of a traffic light for the visually impaired, which would help them to move around in double lanes.
The ideas
Our project started when we were discussing problems on road safety in our city, and one of colleagues reported the difficulties that a visually impaired relative has when he is in the city center precisely because usually nobody helps him to cross the street. We decided that we wanted to do something about it!
This project aims to serve people with visual impairment. We know that for many years people with some type of disability, whether visual, physical or hearing have always had many difficulties in being integrated in society and move around with more autonomy. They were excluded and their needs were not taken into account but society has been changing and nowadays people are more aware that is necessary to pay attention to this group of people and its vulnerabilities.
With our project, and inspired by the visually impaired and their road safety, we seek to organize a project in our city which would help them to cross the street more safely. In spite of not having exact data on the percentage of people with disabilities we believe our proposal would be positive.
The initiatives
Our idea is the creation of traffic light that would include devices to help the visually impaired. This way, it would be easier for them around in double lanes.
Our proposal of the traffic light has Braille and LED mechanisms, along with a kind of remote control that is a chip that would be in the form of a key chain and should be made available only to people with visual impairments. There is a sensor in the bottom of the traffic light and when the visually impaired person arrives to the crosswalk, he would approach the Key chain (chip) to the traffic light sensor and this way the double-lane traffic light would be closed and the person would be able to cross the street safely.
This device would have a small infrared sensor, which would detect an obstacle in front of it by emitting electromagnetic waves. The intensity with which this wave would return to the receiver would show the distance of the object in relation to the person. The communication between the electronic device and the person, would take place through a headset that would be in the ear of the individual, who through a noise would know that there is an obstacle ahead.
The fundamental idea is the use of waves that are reflected when they hit an object that, when they return, can have their percentage intensities measured.
We wanted to create a prototype in robotics but unfortunately due to the pandemic we were unable to do it. When the school opens again with face-to-face classes we want to materialize our idea in a prototype and we will share it.
We want to transform our planet into a better world and more inclusive one!
