2019/2020

Blind Industries of Baltimore (BISM) is a manufacturing and training facility where blind associates manufacture products for the military and state of Maryland. My senior design team of four mechanical engineers has been tasked to develop a system that improves forklift safety for blind operators. We began the project in August and since then spent countless hours at the BISM facility working with the end users to improve forklift safety. Our final product will be a system of sensors that uses computer vision to detect people in the warehouse and their relative path and direction in reference to the forklift. An on-board computer will then determine if there is any risk to the user and provide haptic and auditory feedback to the blind operator. 

We have had a blast developing the system so far and have implemented our custom system on a mini test vehicle with success (shown in the videos and gallery below).