Research on Design and Motion Control of a Considerate Guide Mobile Robot for Visually Impaired People

Guide mobile robot have been researched and developed for decades. However, current robot cannot guide the user to the destination considerately, since the status of the user and the properties of the obstacles are not considered, especially for the guiding work of servicing visually impaired people. In this paper, a guide mobile robot with an easy-to-hold handle is designed, a generation method of spatial risk map is proposed to evaluate the influences of potential spaces of objects and a motion control method based on spatial risk map considering potential occupied spaces of objects is proposed. The users are successfully guided to the destination naturally without influencing other pedestrians by avoiding entering the potential spaces of objects automatically, and they can adjust their moving status in their own will since the considerate robot can adaptively adjust its guide status to adapt to the user. Through comparing guiding experiments of different tasks for 10 blindfolded users, the proposed guide mobile robot is proven considerate by guiding the users adaptively and make other pedestrians feel comfortable by avoiding entering the potential spaces of objects automatically.