TY - GEN
T1 - Navigating Real-World Challenges
T2 - 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Sytems, CHI 2024
AU - Cai, Shaojun
AU - Ram, Ashwin
AU - Gou, Zhengtai
AU - Shaikh, Mohd Alqama Wasim
AU - Chen, Yu-An
AU - Wan, Yingjia
AU - Hara, Kotaro
AU - Zhao, Shengdong
AU - Hsu, David
PY - 2024/5
Y1 - 2024/5
N2 - Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI) people find challenges in navigating unfamiliar environments, even using assistive tools such as white canes or smart devices. Increasingly affordable quadruped robots offer us opportunities to design autonomous guides that could improve how BVI people find ways around unfamiliar environments and maneuver therein. In this work, we designed RDog, a quadruped robot guiding system that supports BVI individuals' navigation and obstacle avoidance in indoor and outdoor environments. RDog combines an advanced mapping and navigation system to guide users with force feedback and preemptive voice feedback. Using this robot as an evaluation apparatus, we conducted experiments to investigate the difference in BVI people's ambulatory behaviors using a white cane, a smart cane, and RDog. Results illustrated the benefits of RDog-based ambulation, including faster and smoother navigation with fewer collisions and limitations, and reduced cognitive load. We discuss the implications of our work for multi-terrain assistive guidance systems. © 2024 Copyright held by the owner/author(s)
AB - Blind and Visually Impaired (BVI) people find challenges in navigating unfamiliar environments, even using assistive tools such as white canes or smart devices. Increasingly affordable quadruped robots offer us opportunities to design autonomous guides that could improve how BVI people find ways around unfamiliar environments and maneuver therein. In this work, we designed RDog, a quadruped robot guiding system that supports BVI individuals' navigation and obstacle avoidance in indoor and outdoor environments. RDog combines an advanced mapping and navigation system to guide users with force feedback and preemptive voice feedback. Using this robot as an evaluation apparatus, we conducted experiments to investigate the difference in BVI people's ambulatory behaviors using a white cane, a smart cane, and RDog. Results illustrated the benefits of RDog-based ambulation, including faster and smoother navigation with fewer collisions and limitations, and reduced cognitive load. We discuss the implications of our work for multi-terrain assistive guidance systems. © 2024 Copyright held by the owner/author(s)
KW - assistive technology
KW - navigation
KW - orientation and mobility
KW - robot guide dog
KW - visual impairment
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85194497102
UR - https://www.scopus.com/record/pubmetrics.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85194497102&origin=recordpage
U2 - 10.1145/3613904.3642227
DO - 10.1145/3613904.3642227
M3 - RGC 32 - Refereed conference paper (with host publication)
SN - 979-8-4007-0330-0
T3 - Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
BT - CHI '24
PB - Association for Computing Machinery
Y2 - 11 May 2024 through 16 May 2024
ER -