Related papers: An Efficient Indoor Navigation Technique To Find O…
We present a semantically rich graph representation for indoor robotic navigation. Our graph representation encodes: semantic locations such as offices or corridors as nodes, and navigational behaviors such as enter office or cross a…
This paper describes a system whereby a robot detects and track human-meaningful navigational cues as it navigates in an indoor environment. It is intended as the sensor front-end for a mobile robot system that can communicate its…
We introduce ChartA11y, an app developed to enable accessible 2-D visualizations on smartphones for blind users through a participatory and iterative design process involving 13 sessions with two blind partners. We also present a design…
We present a novel high-level planning framework that leverages vision-language models (VLMs) to improve autonomous navigation in unknown indoor environments with many dead ends. Traditional exploration methods often take inefficient routes…
As social VR applications grow in popularity, blind and low vision users encounter continued accessibility barriers. Yet social VR, which enables multiple people to engage in the same virtual space, presents a unique opportunity to allow…
In recent years, consumer Unmanned Aerial Vehicles have become very popular, everyone can buy and fly a drone without previous experience, which raises concern in regards to regulations and public safety. In this paper, we present a novel…
This paper explores the principles for transforming a quadrupedal robot into a guide robot for individuals with visual impairments. A guide robot has great potential to resolve the limited availability of guide animals that are accessible…
Executable QR codes, also known as eQR codes or just sQRy, are a special kind of QR codes that embed programs conceived to run on mobile devices like smartphones. Since the program is directly encoded in binary form within the QR code, it…
In recent decades, several assistive technologies have been developed to improve the ability of blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals to navigate independently and safely. At the same time, simultaneous localization and mapping…
Advancements in object detection algorithms have opened new avenues for assistive technologies that cater to the needs of visually impaired individuals. This paper presents a novel approach for indoor assistance to the blind by addressing…
The task of indoor positioning is fundamental to several applications, including navigation, healthcare, location-based services, and security. An emerging field is inertial navigation for pedestrians, which relies only on inertial sensors…
Traditional indoor robot navigation methods provide a reliable solution when adapted to constrained scenarios, but lack flexibility or require manual re-tuning when deployed in more complex settings. In contrast, learning-based approaches…
We propose a novel type of map for visual navigation, a renderable neural radiance map (RNR-Map), which is designed to contain the overall visual information of a 3D environment. The RNR-Map has a grid form and consists of latent codes at…
Group interactions are essential to social functioning, yet effective engagement relies on the ability to recognize and interpret visual cues, making such engagement a significant challenge for blind people. In this paper, we investigate…
Robots often face manipulation tasks in environments where vision is inadequate due to clutter, occlusions, or poor lighting--for example, reaching a shutoff valve at the back of a sink cabinet or locating a light switch above a crowded…
While commendable progress has been made in user-centric research on mobile assistive systems for blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals, references that directly inform robot navigation design remain rare. To bridge this gap, we conducted…
QR codes have become ubiquitous in daily life, enabling rapid information exchange. With the increasing adoption of smart wearable devices, there is a need for efficient, and friction-less QR code reading capabilities from Egocentric…
In this paper, we focus on the potential use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for search and rescue (SAR) missions in GPS-denied indoor environments. We consider the problem of navigating a UAV to a wireless signal source, e.g., a…
We present a generalized velocity model to improve localization when using an Inertial Navigation System (INS). This algorithm was applied to correct the velocity of a smart phone based indoor INS system to increase the accuracy by…
Indoor localization services are a crucial aspect for the realization of smart cyber-physical systems within cities of the future. Such services are poised to reinvent the process of navigation and tracking of people and assets in a variety…