Development and performance evaluation of portable Braille scanner using simple plate spring sensor

This paper proposes a portable Braille reading sensor which is consisting of three plate springs and strain gauges. A Braille letter is composed of six dots of 3 rows and 2 columns. Each plate spring corresponds to each row of the dot. The detection and conversion process are as follows: With the plate spring passing on a dot, the bending strain of the plate springs are detected through the strain gauge. The detected strain signals are converted to 0-1 normalized sequences, in which 0 means no dot and 1 corresponds to a dot. The three normalized sequences are assigned to 0-1 array of 3 times 2. Further, the array is converted to a corresponding letter, and the sequence of letters is transmitted to the voice signal. The performance of the portable Braille reading system is examined through Braille reading test.