A Differently Abled Bus

Here is a first. A bus, owned and managed by Delhi University, for the blind

Here is a first. A bus for the blind, and Vaibhav Durga, a 22-year-old masters student at Delhi University (DU) tried it out recently. As the bus approached a stand, the gadget in his hand—a user-module—alerted him about the route number and destination of the bus. When it halted at the stop, the audio system on the bus instructed him to board. Two years in the making, the Bus Identification and Homing System for the Visually Challenged has been developed by IIT Delhi’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering. Last week, DU started a trial run that is expected to last three to four months, after which the service could be scaled up. The bus, owned and managed by DU, will ply inside North Campus every half hour. The bus also has a hydraulic ramp to enable wheelchair users to board the bus independently. According to the team at IIT that worked on the project, Delhi Transport Corporation has given them permission to run trials on their buses as well.

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Pallavi Polanki