Assistive Technology: An IoT based device for Physically Challenged People and Hospital Inmates

In a world where we have Google Assistant, Siri, Cortana, Alexa and other voice assistive technologies, making the lives of normal people easier, we do not have any sort of such technology for people who are physically challenged or the temporary hospital inmates. Census report of 2011 (2016 updated) reveal that, 2.21% of the total Indian population are disabled. Putting that in numbers, 2.68 Crore people fall into the category. Hospital inmates too do not have an assistance device to inform their needs to the nurse in charge. In this paper, we present an assistive technology in the form of an embedded system solely focused to help physically challenged people and hospital patients communicate with their assistant for assistance, with just a push of a button. The user will have to press a button as per his/her need. Upon pressing, the message is wirelessly transmitted to outside the room and is displayed on the assistant's TV. The same message will also be sent to the assistant in the form of a SMS in case he/she is not present in the vicinity of the TV, thereby ensuring that the services are not missed at any cost. The system uses ARM controller at the transmitter/user end and a Raspberry Pi at the receiver/assistant end. The wireless communication is achieved using zig-bee protocol.