Abstract:
People who are unable to read texts, like people suffering from visual impairments, need
to get new information from books and other written sources for educational purposes and
entertainment. Although there are some audiobooks that they can listen to, there is still an
abundance of books that they might need, which are hard to digitize mainly because of
copyright issues. Therefore, there is a real need for using technology to help facilitate the
reading process of a wide range of books and written material to help this group of people
to overcome their reading difficulties.
To solve this problem, a robot that can read and turn the pages of the book is proposed in
this project. The reading process is carried by capturing the book pages and extracting the
text from the captured image. Then, the text is converted into a speech which can be heard
via a speaker. After finishing reading each page, the robot will turn the page using a wheel
and arm, using different software and hardware components.
The reading robot described above is expected to read specific types of books and, thus,
help various people who have reading difficulties gain access to the informational content
and entertaining content included in books and written material.
