Navigation Device for Visually Impaired

As technical lead on a six-person Purdue senior design team, I built an assistive necklace that gives visually impaired users 360° spatial awareness through haptic feedback. Eight enclosures ring the necklace, each pairing an infrared time-of-flight sensor (8 m range) with an ultrasonic sensor for close objects; their readings fuse via RMS to drive a dedicated ERM vibration motor. I designed the full device in CAD, wrote the firmware that ties every component together, and built the logic mapping distance to vibration intensity. The proof: wearing it, we navigated our building blindfolded.