Blind Entrepreneur Develops Smart Cane with GPS and Voice Assistance

Turkish entrepreneur Kürşat Ceylan, blind since birth, has come up with a new smart cane designed to help blind people navigate with ease in a whole new world of accessibility.

The WeWalk smart cane includes sensors that detect obstacles at face and body level – as opposed to normal canes limited to ground level control – and can pair to a smartphone, using a touchpad to access features such as GPS and voice command. Similar to smartphones, any new features can be simply updated online.

With 39 million blind people in the world, Ceylan aims to transform lives through this new level of freedom of movement, which he says will result in better access to jobs and education.

“WeWalk is not just a smart cane for us,” he says. “WeWalk is a movement to increase full and equal participation in social life.”