Researchers have created a quadrupedal robot designed to help visually impaired individuals navigate through difficult environments, just like your trusty, reliable guide dog.
In the study "Robotic Guide Dog: Leading a Human with Leash-Guided Hybrid Physical Interaction," these researchers from the University of California Berkeley's Hybrid Robotics Group built the quadrupedal robot with a leash that could guide humans through without crashing into walls, objects, or other obstacles.
Robotic Dog Algorithms Easily Be Transferred to Other Robots
Such guide dogs usually are chosen and trained individually, Zhongyu Li, a UC Berkeley Hybrid Robotics Group researcher part of the study team, said in an interview with TechXplore. He added that as the skills of one dog could not be shared with another, training the guide dogs has become tedious and time-wasting. But for robotic guide dogs, algorithms that have been developed on one robotic guide dog can easily be transferred to another.
The leash can be tightened (taut) or stretched (slack). Such use of a leash provides greater flexibility in the positions and movements of both humans and robots as they navigate an environment.
Reactive Planner Developed to Help Robotic Dog Guide Humans
Apart from building the new robotic guide dog, researchers likewise made a hybrid physical human-robot interaction model representing how a robotic and human would interact. A reactive planner was then developed that shifts between taut and slack leash modes so the robotic guide dog could help human users navigate through an environment with ease, even in confined spaces.
When the robotic guide dog-human "team" passes through a narrow space, such as a corner of a small corridor, the robot would be programmed to have the leash mode to go slack, researchers said in a report in The Daily Californian.
Quadrupedal robots are the natural choice as robot guide dogs as they resemble dogs in shape and size, which humans could easily accept to do such crucial tasks.
Li said they decided to use the quadrupedal, called the Mini-Cheetah, which uses a 2D light detection and ranging or LIDAR to sense its surroundings. It also has a camera on a gimbal to monitor the position of the human it is guiding, with a leash for it to more effectively guide people, and a force sensor on the leash to gauge the force applied to it and on the human it is guiding.
Real-world Tests Show Resounding Success
Li and the research team assessed the system in several real-world tests. They would have the robotic dog guide a blindfolded individual to a determined location, as it guides the human to avoid accidents, colliding with obstructions. Test results appeared extremely promising as the robotic dog successfully guided the blindfolded humans to their location without any accident or collision. The robotic guide dog, which features an integrated sensor suite and path-planning algorithms, has proven that it could guide visually impaired individuals safely passing through difficult pathways.
The researchers are now looking at further empowering the robotic guide dog to assist people in navigating more complicated, intricate outdoor routes and help them pass intersections and pedestrian crossings with traffic lights.
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