COMPLETE SPECIFICATION
Title: Shopping Assistant for Blind Field of invention
At present, trade and shopping malls are growing, leading to an increase in commercial
competition not only on a global basis but also within regional communities. Besides unique selling
positions, other competitive advantages, can be enabled with the help of technology by business
competitors and can help build profitability and survival of their businesses. The key factors of business
are to serve the customers of the mall impressively and to suggest and help them find products quickly.
The malls typically use labels to signpost the type or category of products in each block, but it is not
useful for the blind people to find the category of their needed item. Customers in the mall usually search
for products by category or tags and categories to recognize the product position and location. As a
result, customers sometimes find it difficult and confusing to locate the products they need because the
products in a mall consist of a lot of ite-sis and each block has its different types and sizes. In this, we
have developed a shopping navigation assistance as an android application using rfid for product
identification and navigation for identifying the category of the item.
The layout creation is maintained by ac'nin of the shop. The details of the layout are given by admin.
The rack number is also given by admii? and which rack contains which item. The name of the product
is taken from screen reader by user. The .route was identified based on the given product name.
).
The optimized paths were generated by using algorithm. The verbal instructions are generated and the instructions are converted into .iiidio file. The product was identified and the details of the product are retrieved from database and transfer through Wifi to interface. The details of the product are fetched from database. The descriptions ;.;e given to the user through audio file. The audio file is transfer from interface to android phone through -Mluetooth. The product details are played by user through their smart phone.

Summary of the Invention
In this work, a new design is proposed to ease the shopping for blind people independently. This can be achieved by the navigation instructions generated by the mobile application. The blind user chooses the category he needed to purchase and the application will navigate the user to the product. After reaching the rack where the category is present, by using RFID reader the user can get the details of the product, when it receives the s-.^nal from the RFID tag which contains a unique id. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) can als&be used in large firms to track the vast quantities of items and also supply much more information.
In the mobile application developed, provisions were added for the shop keeper for adding their layout. But at the user side, it is implemented for a single shop. It will be extended and will be generalized and implemented for multiple shops. T!$e shop details will be stored in the cloud and when the user reaches the shop based on the geo-locai«>n of the shop, the shop details will be retrieved and the users who are blind will be navigated to their desired location.

Detailed description of the invention
Product table Table 1 describes product name, unique identification of the product and identification of the category. The category id of the product table refer the category
Category table Table 2 describes categoryj'iame, unique identification of the category and number of the rack where the item present.
RFED Table 3 describes RFID tag number and unique identification of the product. The product id of the RFID
table refers the product table. ,;
' Stock details Table 4 describes unique identification of the product, manufacturing date, expiry date, availability and price of the product. The product id of Use RFID table refers the product table.

MODULE DESCRIPTION
The various modules involved in this project are
1. Layout creation
2. Route Identification
3. Navigation.
4. Retrieve item details 1. Layout creation
In this module admin describes cre;S.e layout, assign rack number and maintain database. The admin can create the own layout for the store. The shopkeeper can create their own layout and update the details of the store. The layout of the shop can be given by the fidmin of the shopping mall or supermarket. The details of the layout can be given in the form. The item can be given on which rack the item should be present. The number of the rack is also set by the admin. The location of the-item in the rack is also given by the admin of the shopping mall or supermarket.
Through the user interface the storekeeper gives the rows and columns in the grid. The store keeper can add the position of the rack and the obstacles in the store and it is stores as grid. The admin can maintain the details of the item and assign the RFID nun'6er to the product. RFID tag is given for similar items and the tag id is entered in the server by the admin through" the application RFID is used as it is emerging in the object tracking. It can also be further extended for billing i« the counter. It is cost effective and doesn't need line of sight. The RFID reader reads the tag and sends the tag information to the server and retrieves the product details.
A. Item registration:
The store keeper adds the produc* available into the server. The product details contain product id, manufacturing details, price, quantity, and tnz category of the particular product. The rack number of the category of the product will be maintained in the dat&ase.
The item details are entered into the server through the admin module of the android application. MySql is used for storage and retrieval of the prodivt details in the server.

B. Assign RFID tag:
RFID tag is given for similar items and the tag id is entered in the server by the admin through the application. RFID is used as it is emerging in the object tracking. It can also be further extended for billing in the counter. It is cost effective and doesn't need line of sight. The RFID reader reads the tag and sends the tag information to the server and retrieve the prcduct details.
Advantages of RFID:
Can read from greater distance compared to bar code and does not need line of sight which is impossible for visually impaired persons. RFID tags can be read at faster rate than the barcode. Once the information is set up in the RFID tag it needs only minimum human participation. The RFID contains read/write capabilities which are not available in the case of the bar code. The barcode only stores the manufacturer and the product whereas the RFID can store additional information sy.cn as manufacturing date etc.
2. Route identification
The visually impaired users sometimes r;eeds to purchase only the needed items and doesn't wants to search the entire shop by moving through all the items .For this situation the user gives their needed item . The position of the category which the item belongs to ca.i be retrieved from the database. The current position of the user is identified from the nearby RFID tag and the-path to the desired item is calculated using A* search algorithm.
The shopping mall or supermarket's infrastructure is considered as a grid and it represents the position of the rack or shelves in the mall. The location of the blind people in the shopping mall can identified by RFID which can be a nearer RFID where the blind perso;. stands. The current position of the blind people can identified and the identified location is given as an input tor the A* search algorithm. The optimized path can be calculated by the current location.
A* search algorithm: A* is just like Cijkstra, the only difference is that A* tries to look for a better path by using a heuristic function which gives priori.'y to nodes that are supposed to be better than others. A* tries to look for a better path by using a heuristic function which gives priority to nodes that are supposed to be better than others. It is a fastest search algorithm and provides optimal solution. It is called as informed search algorithm or best first search algorithm. The implementation of this algorithm uses a priority queue.
Distance measure used:
The optimized path can be calculated from the current location of the user and the specified item. The distance measure used is Manhattan distance. This distance measure is chosen as only horizontal and vertical navigation is possible in a mall. It takes th;- sum of absolute values of difference between the coordinates. On square grid that uses 4 directions for neighbourhood. From the experiment in the comparative analysis of heuristic function, it is concluded that Manhattan distance is better than Euclidian distance.

Inventors? Mr.S.Thavasi SrAP/CSE, Mr. G Manoj Kumar SrAP/Mech, Dr.A.Shenbagarajan SrAP/AIDS
'g' denotes the distance between node and gaal, h denotes the distance between start node and this node .f denotes
the sum of g and h. v
g = abs (( node.x - goal.x ) + ( node.y - goal.y)) h = abs (( node.x - start.x ) + ( nocfe.y - start.y)) f=E + h

In android the reader capability is tnabled. In General->AccessibiIity-> Talkback. Few Gestures are followed when talkback is enabled. Single tap brings a button in focus and reads the label of the button. Double tap activates the control.
3. Navigation
After the identification of the optimal path for the desired product, the verbal instructions are given as audio to the application. The blind can firad their desired product with the help of this instruction. The path instructions are given to the visually impaired people through audio. The audio can be played by the blind people through their smart phone. The instruction swch as Go Straight, Turn Left, Turn Right, Move Northwards etc., are generated. The path instruction for the particular product is fully based on which direction the racks or shelves faced Android Text to speech engine is used for speech output for the blind.
The output from the TTS engine is converted into an audio file by using synthesizeToFile(). The output from this function is played on a media player which can be paused, played and stopped. The input to this synthesizeToFile() is the text to convert, a^lroid bundle and the destination where to store the media file. The media file can be played by the blind peoph'^nd hear through headphone.
4. Retrieve Item details
Through navigation instructions th(;*blind people will reach the rack where the item is present. When the RFID tag passes through the frequency field of the scanning antenna, it detects the activation signal and can transfer the information data in holds to be picked up by the scanning antenna. By this technology it detects the RFID tag information and by using raspbe:-."/ pi as the interface it sends the tag information to the server. This system can be embedded in gloves or any o:J .er things that are carried by the blind at all times.
The tag information will be detect'-;d. The tag contains a unique id which is given for a product. The information about the product is retrieved ^rom the database by using this tag information. The information includes product name, brand, manufacturing date, price and the quantity of similar product available in the shop. The details retrieved from the server are ccfverted to audio which is played in the application and can be heard by the visually impaired user. The items available in the next rack of the user's position will also be informed as it enables efficient shopping without anyone's help
Outcomes
In this system we have implemented 5ie navigation algorithm and it identified the route to the desired category that the users needed. Directior./^uidance is used to navigate to the list of products step by step. It describes the details of the route, such as turn left, turn right, walk straight to show the distance it takes to travel. We have tested the navigation 'for 10 products and achieved 96% efficiency.