Smart Shopping Cart for Visually Impaired Individuals

Abstract

Vision is one of our most important tools to help us survive in the world. Not being able to see well or at all is only the tip of the iceberg that people who are visually impaired have to deal with. Along with that, comes a whole new set of societal challenges, stigma, fears, and beliefs making these groups a minority and not shedding enough light on issues that they face is more common than we realize. While everyone in today’s world chases the buzzwords artificial intelligence and robotics to create complex technologies to solve problems like the mundaneness of a task, it would be incorrect to forget about the bigger picture that hints at helping mankind save the rest of it. The visually impaired face a variety of issues right from not being able to navigate along a path to the very basic grocery shopping at a shopping mall. This paper proposes an idea of a smart shopping cart that assists the visually impaired to navigate through various isles of a shopping mart and help them purchase the items they wish to buy with the help of braille assisted buttons and haptic feedback control without feeling the need for any human assistance.