Smart Guider

Mission: Creating navigating tools to help people with disabilities have access to the world like able-bodied people. Vision Developing technology and tools that allow all people access to any environment whether disabled or not. Founding: Kelvin Crosby lost his vision and his ease of navigation, so he decided to solve this problem shared with 21 million other people in the U.S. by developing an autonomous blind cane, the Smart Guider. Kelvin, the Founder and CEO of Smart Guider, was born hard of hearing and lost his vision at age 19. Still, he graduated from San Diego State University with a degree in communication and went on to work with the State of California Vocational Rehabilitation Agency, helping blind people secure gainful employment. Kelvin then started an adaptive technology program to teach blind people the advanced computer skills needed to be competitive in workplace. Subsequently, he realized that many of his students had challenges independently traveling to his office, and he wanted to solve this problem. Self-driving cars were the needed inspiration. Kelvin started by teaching himself how to write the software code and built the first primitive prototype in 40 days. He then realized that he would need to build a team of specialists, and so he recruited several volunteer software developers and mechanical and electrical engineers, who have been working together to build the current prototype. Product: The Smart Guider is an evolved blind cane that uses an intelligent robot and a motorized wheel to guide the blind person when to move forward, backward, left, or right. The tech includes GPS, lidar, ultrasonic, computer vision, and radar sensors to recognize and avoid obstacles. Wayfinding, computer vision mapping, and active RFID then plot the course. These technologies are currently being integrated into a functional prototype.