Traffic signal time analysis and voice - based app for visually impaired pedestrians

Analysis of traffic signal and ensure the safety of visually impaired people is a major challenge in helping disabled people. In this paper, we propose development of an application software which can be easily installed on a mobile device equipped with a camera. This application opens a camera and captures the traffic timer display upon tapping the app-icon. The timer image is then processed to segment the digits in them to identify the actual time in the numeric form. The detected time is then converted as a voice message and played using the app. Thus, the visually impaired person can hear the message about the time left to turn on the pedestrian signal. Getting this alert message, he/she can safely cross the road. The accuracy of the proposed algorithm is found to be 100% as it detected all the digits in every instance of the timer display image.