The conventional stick guide used by a visually impaired person helps detecting objects in their immediate vicinity, but it proves highly inefficient in detecting objects or obstructions that are not in the physical range of the stick. There is no provision made within the stick to help the visually impaired people from impending danger, nor there is no provision made to even contact a guardian when lost or injured. In this paper, a cane model is designed to exploit the sense of hearing and touch for the visually impaired person. The design also endows a visually impaired person with auxiliary “senses” through means of sensors and camera modules to percieve different kinds of obstacles, effectively increasing the perception range. The functionalities hailed in this paper include sensor-based close range detection, camera based traffic sign mid-long range detection and a GPS-based location deduction is developed to send alert messages. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.