What is the Problem?

I have always wanted to be able to help people with solving their problems. Eventually, I decided to help the blind community because around the world, nearly 50 million people are blind. Blind people have trouble sensing objects that are at a medium to far range from them. If I could give them a heads-up for possible incoming obstacles, then their overall safety and confidence while ambulatory can increase.

When researching to solve this problem, I discovered that some animals like bats and whales and even incredibly skilled humans are able to use echolocation to navigate. During further research on our auditory system, I learned that it is able to give us information about sounds such as its pitch, amplitude, and position.

Some other problems I noticed were how blind people still use white canes or walking sticks to navigate. Our sense of touch is not nearly as efficient in delivering information as our sense of hearing.

Another issue I observed was how modern technology was not being fully utilized to solve the issue of blind navigation.  Today we have computer vision and depth sensing which helps robots and self driving cars navigate, yet very little of this technology has been used to help the blind.

Knowing the incredible abilities of the auditory system, I asked myself, "why can't I also use audio cues to make blind navigation easier using modern technology"