BlindPilot: A robotic local navigation system that leads blind people to a landmark object

Seita Kayukawa, Tatsuya Ishihara, Hironobu Takagi, Shigeo Morishima, Chieko Asakawa

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

13 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Blind people face various local navigation challenges in their daily lives such as identifying empty seats in crowded stations, navigating toward a seat, and stopping and sitting at the correct spot. Although voice navigation is a commonly used solution, it requires users to carefully follow frequent navigational sounds over short distances. Therefore, we presented an assistive robot, BlindPilot, which guides blind users to landmark objects using an intuitive handle. BlindPilot employs an RGB-D camera to detect the positions of target objects and uses LiDAR to build a 2D map of the surrounding area. On the basis of the sensing results, BlindPilot then generates a path to the object and guides the user safely. To evaluate our system, we also implemented a sound-based navigation system as a baseline system, and asked six blind participants to approach an empty chair using the two systems. We observed that BlindPilot enabled users to approach a chair faster with a greater feeling of security and less effort compared to the baseline system.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationCHI EA 2020 - Extended Abstracts of the 2020 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
ISBN (Electronic)9781450368193
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2020 Apr 25
Event2020 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2020 - Honolulu, United States
Duration: 2020 Apr 252020 Apr 30

Publication series

NameConference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings

Conference

Conference2020 ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI EA 2020
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityHonolulu
Period20/4/2520/4/30

Keywords

  • Local navigation
  • Robotic system
  • Visual impairments

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Human-Computer Interaction
  • Computer Graphics and Computer-Aided Design
  • Software

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'BlindPilot: A robotic local navigation system that leads blind people to a landmark object'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this