Development of a robotic guide dog

• Main Author: Liao, Yuwen
• Other Authors: Li King Ho Holden
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2022
• Subjects: Engineering::Mechanical engineering
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/157751
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Guide dogs play a significant role in the society by offering independent mobility to the visually impaired. The guide dog ownership among the visually impaired population, however, is still rare worldwide. In Singapore, there are currently only 7 guide dog users and those who intend to apply for a guide dog need to wait for up to 2 years. This is due to the high cost and long duration in both training the guide dogs and matching them with guide dog users. This study aims to develop an experimental robotic guide dog that can perform basic guidance and navigation tasks similar to a real guide dog. Speech recognition and object detection functions are implemented through Robot Operating System (ROS) onto the state-of-the-art robot dog A1, along with navigation function supported by Slamtec 2D LiDAR. A guide dog harness with force sensor is designed to detect the pulling tension and automatically adjust the speed. The performance of the prototype is evaluated by 15 volunteers through 45 runs of experiments. The result shows that 7 out of the 8 commands can reach 73% success rate after 3 repeated runs. The total cost of the prototype is only 30% compared to training a real guide dog. The proof-of-concept development has shown great potential to be implemented in real life, which could eventually make guide dog service more accessible to those in need.