Garvit Paliwal and Sumit Sharma, both engineering students from Udaipur, have developed a sensor enabled walking stick for the visually impaired.

Enabling technology for this purpose, the two BTech final year Electrical stream students from Udaipur's Aravali Institute of Technical Studies, facilitated sensors and GPS in a normal walking stick to call it the "Smart Stick".  A video below describes the working of the device.

This smart stick facilitates ease in navigating for the visually impaired by alerting them of their surroundings using sensors.  The sensor identify the presence of an object in the close vicinity of the user with the stick and triggers an alert, in the form of a beep sound and vibration. As darkness envelopes the surroundings, the sensors power on a light on the stick, enabling people around to see the person and avoid collision.

The device is also fitted with GPS.  This GPS lets the users pair it with their smartphones, making integration with voice assistant and Google Maps possible. This feature can also alert a nearby police station if the user is in any form of difficulty.

Garvit and Sumit are working on fine tuning the device to add additional features as well.