Five students; Beni Kurniawan (Electrical Engineering), M. Dwi Nur Afini (Electrical Engineering), M. Rashannaufal G (Electrical Engineering), and M. Bintang Saktya (Information Systems), and Vieri Faturrahman, (Electrical Engineering) were supervised by Ir . Nurussa’adah M.T., created a tool called Visual Mate or VISMATE which can be an alternative for blind people with disabilities in communication and mobilization.
“VISMATE is a tool that makes it easier for blind and deaf people with disabilities in their daily activities. There are features to make it easier for users, namely detecting obstacles on the road to direct users to avoid accidents. “Detection of obstacles or obstructions is obtained from measurements by the ToF (Time of Flight) distance sensor,” said one of team members, Beni.
In this tool there is a camera which functions to translate photos into written form using the image recognition method. The writing will be translated using sound (text to speech) to facilitate interaction between blind and deaf people. This tool is also integrated with the Internet of Things using an Android-based application interface. In this application there is a tracking feature to make it easier for users and their families to monitor remotely in real time.
Disability is a condition where a person experiences physical, intellectual, mental and/or sensory limitations for a long period of time which can hinder interaction with the environment.
Based on data from the Central Statistics Agency (BPS), in 2020 the number of people with disabilities in Indonesia reached 22.5 million people or around five percent of Indonesia’s population. One type of disability that is commonly found in society is the blind. Obstacles commonly experienced by people with visual impairments are artectural obstacles caused by physical conditions in the environment that are less supportive for access by people with disabilities, such as difficulty in accessing print media that is not equipped with braille or tactual (touchable) instructions. This makes it quite difficult for blind people to obtain the information they need from print media without help from people around them. Apart from obstacles in obtaining information, blind people also need tools to help them mobilize. In terms of communicating, blind people have problems when they need to communicate with deaf and speech impaired people.
Deaf, speech and visual impairment are opposite disabilities. This is because deaf and speech impaired people rely on their visual abilities to communicate, while blind people rely on their hearing abilities, which creates quite complex problems so that they need an intermediary or the help of a third person to communicate.
Technology that plays a role in increasing the independence of blind people with assistance using computer vision methods and makes “VISMATE” a friend of the disabled with many features from various sensors. This helps deaf people to communicate with other people and the public by using smartphone applications that are integrated with the Internet of Things. [UB PR/ Trans. Iir]
