Related papers: Robot-Assisted Group Tours for Blind People
Autonomy and independent navigation are vital to daily life but remain challenging for individuals with blindness. Robotic systems can enhance mobility and confidence by providing intelligent navigation assistance. However, fully autonomous…
Blind people have limited opportunities to explore an environment based on their interests. While existing navigation systems could provide them with surrounding information while navigating, they have limited scalability as they require…
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…
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…
Human-aware robot navigation promises a range of applications in which mobile robots bring versatile assistance to people in common human environments. While prior research has mostly focused on modeling pedestrians as independent,…
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…
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…
Access to non-verbal cues in social interactions is vital for people with visual impairment. It has been shown that non-verbal cues such as eye contact, number of people, their names and positions are helpful for individuals who are blind.…
Robot navigation in crowded pedestrian environments is a well-known challenge and we explore the practical deployment of group-based representations in this setting. Pedestrian groups have been empirically shown to enable a mobile robot's…
Social robots, also known as service or assistant robots, have been developed to improve the quality of human life in recent years. The design of socially capable and intelligent robots can vary, depending on the target user groups. In this…
Nature plays a crucial role in human health and well-being, but little is known about how blind people experience and relate to it. We conducted a survey of nature relatedness with blind (N=20) and sighted (N=20) participants, along with…
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…
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…
In this paper, we explore the design and use of conversational telepresence robots to help homebound older adults interact with the external world. An initial needfinding study (N=8) using video vignettes revealed older adults' experiential…
When deploying interactive agents like (social) robots in public spaces they need to be able to interact with a diverse audience, with members each having individual diversity characteristics and prior experiences with interactive systems.…
Autonomous navigation robots can increase the independence of blind people but often limit user control, following what is called in Japanese an "omakase" approach where decisions are left to the robot. This research investigates ways to…
Recently, research in human-robot interaction began to consider a robot's influence at the group level. Despite the recent growth in research investigating the effects of robots within groups of people, our overall understanding of what…
Meaningful social interaction is vital to well-being, yet Blind and Low Vision (BLV) individuals face persistent barriers when collaborating with sighted peers due to inaccessible visual cues. While most wearable assistive technologies…
To help the blind people walk to the destination efficiently and safely in indoor environment, a novel wearable navigation device is presented in this paper. The locating, way-finding, route following and obstacle avoiding modules are the…