Anambra students design smart walking sticks for visually impaired

Students of Regina Pacis Secondary School, Anambra have designed walking sticks that can detect obstacles in front of a visually impaired person. 

In 2018, students from the school won the Junior Gold award in the world technovation challenge in the United States of America after they developed a mobile application (app) called the fake drug (FD) detector to help combat fake pharmaceutical products in Nigeria.

After the feat, the students, using robotics and coding, designed smart walking sticks that can help to detect obstacles about 120 centimetres from a visually impaired person.

Speaking at the launch of the innovation, Chibuzor Obierika, the youth coordinator, Nigeria Association of the Blind (NAB), Anambra state, said the smart walking sticks were improvements on the first sets.

“After building this project, we noticed it could only sense obstacles horizontally in front of the blind man, so we decided to advance this project. The smart sticks can now sense objects from an angle of elevation and an angle of depression,” Obierika said.

“The smart sticks have an in-built ultrasonic sensor that alerts a blind person of an obstacle not less than 120 centimetres ahead of him or her.”

She said the initiative was done in accordance with the state government’s mandate to support innovations among young and talented people.

The invention was unveiled during the pastoral visit of Valerian Okeke, metropolitan archbishop of the Onitsha diocese.

While unveiling the innovation and distributing more than 20 packs of the devices to many visually impaired people, the clergyman and Nnemeka Achebe, the Obi of Onitsha commended the students for the feat.

Some visually impaired persons tested the walking sticks.

“I feel very much elated. In today’s society, visually impaired people have gone past the era of being perceived as being incapable of contributing to societal development,” a member of the visually impaired community said.

“These smart sticks would go a long way in helping them live a life of independence.”