Smart Vision Glasses for Text Reading and Obstacle Detection

Smart Vision Glasses for Text Reading and Obstacle Detection is an intelligent wearable assistive system designed to support visually impaired individuals in performing daily navigation and information access tasks independently. Conventional mobility aids such as white canes provide only limited support for ground-level obstacle detection and cannot assist users in reading text from signboards, labels, or printed notices. To overcome these limitations, the proposed system integrates a camera-enabled smart glass with a compact embedded processing unit based on Raspberry Pi. The wearable camera continuously captures real-time visual scenes from the user’s surroundings. Image processing and computer vision algorithms are used to identify nearby obstacles and recognize printed text from boards, books, and public signs. The recognized text is converted into speech using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Text-to-Speech (TTS) technologies, allowing the user to hear the information through earphones. Simultaneously, the obstacle detection module analyzes the surrounding environment and provides instant audio alerts about the presence and position of objects to help users avoid collisions. The proposed system is designed to be lightweight, affordable, portable, and user-friendly. It improves safety, confidence, and independent mobility for visually impaired users. Experimental testing of the developed prototype demonstrated reliable text reading performance and effective obstacle detection under indoor and semi-outdoor conditions. This project highlights the practical application of embedded AI and assistive technology for social impact.