Guide dogs have played a fundamental role in society for many decades. The guide dog is a dog educated to facilitate the daily life of a blind person, and especially in their movements, by being trained to help humans move around their environment.
In fact, these highly educated and trained animals have proven to be valuable assistants for the visually impaired, allowing them to walk safely not only indoors but outdoors.
We have recently learned that researchers from the Hybrid Robotics Group at the University of California, Berkeley, have created a quadruped robot with a leash that could take on the function and role of a guide dog , which could be very useful at the time to help humans walk safely indoors without colliding with obstacles, such as objects or walls.
Specialists who are in charge of training guide dogs face some common problems that make the training time-consuming and labor-intensive , and the process not easily scalable. For example, guide dogs generally need to be selected and trained individually, while their skills cannot be transferred to another.
However, the algorithms developed in a robotic guide dog can be implemented very easily in another robot , which greatly facilitates the task of “training” it.
In recent years, four-legged robots (also known as quadruped robots) have become increasingly sophisticated. Many of them have also become much more affordable by being easy to manufacture and build on a large scale. And as they resemble dogs, both in shape and size, specialists believe they could be excellent substitutes for guide dogs, being even easier for humans to accept than other robotic systems.
A robotic guide dog named Mini Cheetah
On this occasion, the robotic guide dog has been equipped with a 2D LiDAR in order to detect the environment, a camera to track the position of the targeted human being, a leash to guide people and, finally, a force sensor included. on the strap to measure the force the human is applying.
Until now, most of the different systems developed to guide blind people were based on rigid robotic arms capable of detecting obstacles and helping individuals to get around them.
However, now, the robotic guide dog, being attached to a flexible leash that can be stretched, tightened or released, instead of a rigid structure, offers greater flexibility in movements, which facilitates its use.
In addition to the creation of the robotic guide dog, the researchers developed a hybrid human-robot physical interaction model capable of describing the dynamic relationships between the robotic dog and a human user . Thus, using this model, the researchers developed a reactive planner capable of switching between tight and slack belt modes, in order to guide users more effectively in tight spaces.
This allows that, for example, when the human enters a narrow space, such as a corner of a hallway, the robot can release the strap, allowing it to reposition itself and reorient its location without directly influencing the individual. human. The robot can then let the strap tighten to guide it through this small space.
