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Finding obstacle-free paths in unknown environments is a big navigation issue for visually impaired people and autonomous robots. Previous works focus on obstacle avoidance, however they do not have a general view of the environment they…
This paper presents a hierarchical control strategy based on hybrid systems theory, nonlinear control, and safety-critical systems to enable cooperative locomotion of robotic guide dogs and visually impaired people. We address…
Curbs -- the edge of a raised sidewalk at the point where it meets a street -- crucial in urban environments where they help delineate safe pedestrian zones, from dangerous vehicular lanes. However, curbs themselves are significant…
Mobile robot navigation is typically regarded as a geometric problem, in which the robot's objective is to perceive the geometry of the environment in order to plan collision-free paths towards a desired goal. However, a purely geometric…
Recent Vision-and-Language Navigation (VLN) advancements are promising, but their idealized assumptions about robot movement and control fail to reflect physically embodied deployment challenges. To bridge this gap, we introduce VLN-PE, a…
Guide dogs play a critical role in the lives of many, however training them is a time- and labor-intensive process. We are developing a method to allow an autonomous robot to physically guide humans using direct human-robot communication.…
Drivers' perception of risky situations has always been a challenge in driving. Existing risk-detection methods excel at identifying collisions but face challenges in assessing the behavior of road users in non-collision situations. This…
Visual target navigation is a critical capability for autonomous robots operating in unknown environments, particularly in human-robot interaction scenarios. While classical and learning-based methods have shown promise, most existing…
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…
Patients suffering from quadriplegia have limited body motion which prevents them from performing daily activities. We have developed an assistive robotic system with an intuitive free-view gaze interface. The user's point of regard is…
Vision-and-Language Navigation (VLN) empowers agents to associate time-sequenced visual observations with corresponding instructions to make sequential decisions. However, generalization remains a persistent challenge, particularly when…
This paper presents a study on the development of an obstacle-avoidance navigation system for autonomous navigation in home environments. The system utilizes vision-based techniques and advanced path-planning algorithms to enable the robot…
Bird's-Eye-View (BEV) perception has become a foundational paradigm in autonomous driving, enabling unified spatial representations that support robust multi-sensor fusion and multi-agent collaboration. As autonomous vehicles transition…
The rapid growth of virtual reality (VR) has led to increased use of social VR platforms for interaction. However, these platforms lack adequate features to support blind and low vision (BLV) users, posing significant challenges in…
Perception is necessary for autonomous navigation in an unknown area crowded with obstacles. It's challenging for a robot to navigate safely without any sensors that can sense the environment, resulting in a $\textit{blind}$ robot, and…
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…
Multi-robot systems are increasingly deployed in high-risk missions such as reconnaissance, disaster response, and subterranean operations. Protecting a human operator while navigating unknown and adversarial environments remains a critical…
Ensuring that robot navigation is safe and socially acceptable is crucial for comfortable human-robot interaction in shared environments. However, existing validation methods often rely on a bird's-eye (allocentric) perspective, which fails…
Navigation in cluttered underwater environments is challenging, especially when there are constraints on communication and self-localisation. Part of the fully distributed underwater navigation problem has been resolved by introducing…
This paper addresses the autonomous robot navigation problem in a priori unknown n-dimensional environments containing disjoint convex obstacles of arbitrary shapes and sizes, with pairwise distances strictly greater than the robot's…