The Bat-Bot is designed to help people with vision impairment navigate in an easy hands-free way. As its name suggests similarly to a bat, when the user approaches an object, the sensors located at the front and top of the robot activate. This sets off a vibration that warns the person of the object before collision. The sensitivity can be easily adjusted so that you can have a conversation with someone without it buzzing because they are too close.
In the initial design we noticed that the robot while being able to sense large objects such as walls failed to detect any objects below the sensors line of sight such as a chair or table. To fix this we added a second sensor, this was found to successfully detect these obstacles.
The Bat-Bot achieved its end goal of detecting any large potentially hazardous objects that a blind person might face. We tested walls, chairs, tables and can confidently say if I was a blind person I would have confidence in our product keeping me safe. However, there are obviously limits to what the Bat-Bot can achieve. For example, any small hazards such as Lego bricks, or a banana skin would be too close to the ground and therefor be undetectable from the device.
