Smart cane has GPRS system for finding its location.
Mateo Sokač , IT student at the Rochester Institute of Technology Croatia, Ivan Jureša, a computer science student at the Faculty of Engineering in Rijeka, and Ivan Brlas have now reached the finals of the student competition Elektroboj which they entered with their idea of a smart cane for the blind and visually impaired, reports Poslovni.hr on July 20, 2016.
“We agreed that we wanted to make a device related to the assignment named ‘Helping people with physical difficulties’. We felt that the scope of what can be done in this area is much larger than the other topic entitled ‘Educate’, where the purpose was to create a device or a platform that would serve to educate people about technical sciences. Of course, the very thought that we might have an opportunity to do something that could in some way significantly improve a person’s quality of life was very motivating”, says Ivan Brlas.
“We believe that this item has a bright future in the market. Next, we will continue to work on it until we are satisfied with the final prototype and then we will try to market it. Our smart cane is very useful, mostly because a blind or visually impaired person can get a better sense of the space and objects surrounding them, and it also has a GPRS system for reporting the location of the cane if the person gets lost and a sensor that can sense whether the person has lost the cane and provide information about its location”, explains Brlas.
According to him, they plan to apply for one of business incubators or accelerators and to use the guidance of their future mentors to gain experience and attract investments that would help turn this prototype into a product.
“Smart cane is a very innovative prototype considering its functionalities and features. We have focused our efforts on helping people improve their quality of life through our project. Unfortunately, we have not tested it with the right people as of yet, but it is our plan to do that as soon as possible in order to find out whether we are taking everything in the right direction”, concludes Brlas.
