This paper presents an assistive system for the visually impaired that helps the individual to move about in the environment freely and avoids obstacles in the process. This small and efficient obstacle detection system (ODS) is placed on the shoes of the visually challenged person to provide free mobility for the individual. The system contains a microcontroller ARM cortex M3 LPC1768 which receives data from two sensors for obstacle detection. An ultrasonic sensor is used as the range finder and an infrared sensor is used to decrease the number of false positives of detections and make the system more decisive. To increase the efficiency of the system, a force sensitive resistor (FSR) sensor is placed at the sole of the shoe. This system also sends the obstacle distance values to a cloud server which can be accessed anywhere and at any time. © 2006-2017 Asian Research Publishing Network (ARPN).