Related papers: Designing a Wayfinding Robot for People with Visua…
Navigating unfamiliar environments remains one of the most persistent and critical challenges for people who are blind or have limited vision (BLV). Existing assistive tools often rely on online services or APIs, making them costly,…
While there is no replacement for the learned expertise, devotion, and social benefits of a guide dog, there are cases in which a robot navigation assistant could be helpful for individuals with blindness or low vision (BLV). This study…
Researchers and robotic development groups have recently started paying special attention to autonomous mobile robot navigation in indoor environments using vision sensors. The required data is provided for robot navigation and object…
Humans can robustly follow a visual trajectory defined by a sequence of images (i.e. a video) regardless of substantial changes in the environment or the presence of obstacles. We aim at endowing similar visual navigation capabilities to…
A robot guide dog has compelling advantages over animal guide dogs for its cost-effectiveness, potential for mass production, and low maintenance burden. However, despite the long history of guide dog robot research, previous studies were…
As able-bodied people, we often take our vision for granted. For people who are visually impaired, however, their disability can have a significant impact on their daily lives. We are developing proprietary headgear that will help visually…
One of the most important barriers toward a widespread use of mobile robots in unstructured and human populated work environments is the ability to plan a safe path. In this paper, we propose to delegate this activity to a human operator…
Indoor motion planning focuses on solving the problem of navigating an agent through a cluttered environment. To date, quite a lot of work has been done in this field, but these methods often fail to find the optimal balance between…
Visually impaired persons find it difficult to know about their surroundings while walking on a road. Walking sticks used by them can only give them information about the obstacles in the stick's proximity. Moreover, it is mostly effective…
Robots are increasingly operating in indoor environments designed for and shared with people. However, robots working safely and autonomously in uneven and unstructured environments still face great challenges. Many modern indoor…
Millions of blind and visually-impaired (BVI) people navigate urban environments every day, using smartphones for high-level path-planning and white canes or guide dogs for local information. However, many BVI people still struggle to…
Navigation presents a significant challenge for persons with visual impairments (PVI). While traditional aids such as white canes and guide dogs are invaluable, they fall short in delivering detailed spatial information and precise guidance…
Majority of the existing robot navigation systems, which facilitate the use of laser range finders, sonar sensors or artificial landmarks, has the ability to locate itself in an unknown environment and then build a map of the corresponding…
Guiding robots can not only detect close-range obstacles like other guiding tools, but also extend its range to perceive the environment when making decisions. However, most existing works over-simplified the interaction between human…
People with blindness and low vision (pBLV) experience significant challenges when locating final destinations or targeting specific objects in unfamiliar environments. Furthermore, besides initially locating and orienting oneself to a…
Although outdoor navigation systems are mostly dependent on GPS, indoor systems have to rely upon different techniques for localizing the user, due to unavailability of GPS signals in indoor environments. Over the past decade various indoor…
Object Goal Navigation (ObjectNav) task is to navigate an agent to an object category in unseen environments without a pre-built map. In this paper, we solve this task by predicting the distance to the target using semantically-related…
Wayfinding signs play an important role in guiding users to navigate in a virtual environment and in helping pedestrians to find their ways in a real-world architectural site. Conventionally, the wayfinding design of a virtual environment…
The navigation of indoor spaces poses difficult challenges for individuals with visual impairments, as it requires processing of sensory information, dealing with uncertainties, and relying on assistance. To tackle these challenges, we…
The purpose of this paper is to explore a new way of autonomous mapping. Current systems using perception techniques like LAZER or SONAR use probabilistic methods and have a drawback of allowing considerable uncertainty in the mapping…