Related papers: GuideNav: User-Informed Development of a Vision-On…
While guide dogs offer essential mobility assistance, their high cost, limited availability, and care requirements make them inaccessible to most blind or low vision (BLV) individuals. Recent advances in quadruped robots provide a scalable…
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…
Dog guides are favored by blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals for their ability to enhance independence and confidence by reducing safety concerns and increasing navigation efficiency compared to traditional mobility aids. However, only…
Robotic guide dogs hold significant potential to enhance the autonomy and mobility of blind or visually impaired (BVI) individuals by offering universal assistance over unstructured terrains at affordable costs. However, the design of…
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…
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…
Quadruped robots have the potential to guide blind and low vision (BLV) people due to their highly flexible locomotion and emotional value provided by their bionic forms. However, the development of quadruped guide robots rarely involves…
Robotic guidance systems have shown promise in supporting blind and visually impaired (BVI) individuals with wayfinding and obstacle avoidance. However, most existing systems assume a clear path and do not support a critical aspect of…
For people affected by blindness and low vision (BLV), safe and independent navigation remains a major challenge, impacting over 2.2 billion individuals worldwide. Although multimodal large language models (MLLMs) offer new opportunities…
Robot guide dogs offer navigation assistance that greatly expands the independent mobility of the visually impaired, but their effective use requires subtle human-robot coordination that is difficult for users to learn from generic verbal…
A quadruped robot is a promising system that can offer assistance comparable to that of dog guides due to its similar form factor. However, various challenges remain in making these robots a reliable option for blind and low-vision (BLV)…
Guiding robots, in the form of canes or cars, have recently been explored to assist blind and low vision (BLV) people. Such robots can provide full or partial autonomy when guiding. However, the pros and cons of different forms and autonomy…
Safe navigation for the visually impaired individuals remains a critical challenge, especially concerning head-level obstacles, which traditional mobility aids often fail to detect. We introduce GuideTouch, a compact, affordable, standalone…
This paper presents a VR-based guide dog training system designed to assist novice trainers in understanding guide dog behavior and issuing appropriate training commands. Guide dogs play a vital role in supporting independent mobility for…
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…
Guide dogs offer independence to Blind and Low-Vision (BLV) individuals, yet their limited availability leaves the vast majority of BLV users without access. Quadruped robotic guide dogs present a promising alternative, but existing systems…
Assistive robotics is an important subarea of robotics that focuses on the well-being of people with disabilities. A robotic guide dog is an assistive quadruped robot that helps visually impaired people in obstacle avoidance and navigation.…
Navigating complex urban environments using natural language instructions poses significant challenges for embodied agents, including noisy language instructions, ambiguous spatial references, diverse landmarks, and dynamic street scenes.…
Blind and low-vision (BLV) people rely on GPS-based systems for outdoor navigation. GPS's inaccuracy, however, causes them to veer off track, run into obstacles, and struggle to reach precise destinations. While prior work has made precise…
Guidance robots that can guide people and avoid various obstacles, could potentially be owned by more visually impaired people at a fairly low cost. Most of the previous guidance robots for the visually impaired ignored the human response…