People succeeded in creating robot dogs almost before they learned to develop robots with locomotor skills, but the former’s main areas of application still look less serious. The China Zhiyuan Research Institute from Hangzhou demonstrated how a robot dog can be used to guide blind people, opening up another useful application area for such robots.
The development is named “Little Garden” and is its first development proved at an exhibition in Beijing dedicated to rehabilitation and care methods for disabled people. The four legs of the robot are equipped with wheels, which enhances the smooth driving of the robot, but it can make full use of the latter and go up and down stairs and slopes smoothly enough without causing discomfort to the accompanying blind person. In addition, the wheel travel reduces the noise level when the robot’s actuators operate, thereby causing no additional disruption to people accustomed to orienting themselves in space by their ears.
In addition, the robot is able to detect obstacles located above a human’s waist, such as low-lying tree branches, which cannot be identified using a walking stick or other traditional methods. The positioning accuracy when constructing a route using the standard navigation system of the guided robot is 30 centimeters. Indoors, the robot successfully identified 99% of obstacles; in open spaces, the number dropped slightly to 96%. In addition to accessing digital maps of the area, the robots can also obtain information about ramps and other design solutions in specific buildings to make them more accessible for people with disabilities. He can also seek help from nearby volunteers who have left their contact information in the corresponding database.
This development is important for China, as the country currently has more than 17 million visually impaired people and the number of trained guide dogs is limited to 400. It takes about a year to train a dog, and you can buy one for $29,776. In this case, a guided bot might be a good choice. Trials involving blind volunteers have begun in several areas of China.
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