Robots Helping the Blind to Navigate the World

Imag­ine try­ing to suc­cess­ful­ly nav­i­gate through an urban area for the first time – wait­ing at a cross­walk, find­ing the right streets, and try­ing to not get lost in the process. Now, imag­ine try­ing to do it blind. It makes a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion seem almost impos­si­ble, right? Maybe not for long.

Researchers at Carnegie Mel­lon University’s Tech­Bridge­World are try­ing to fig­ure out how to make the world more acces­si­ble to the blind. Accord­ing to Robot­ic Trends, CMU is exper­i­ment­ing with a col­lab­o­ra­tive robot, Bax­ter, to explore how those who are visu­al­ly impaired can bet­ter explore urban envi­ron­ments – a sit­u­a­tion which can be scary. Researchers believe that in the future, Bax­ter may be able to work in col­lab­o­ra­tion with mobile robot net­works to help guide the blind through their dai­ly lives out­side of their famil­iar surroundings. 

A lot of blind peo­ple are afraid to explore unfa­mil­iar places because they are afraid of get­ting lost, M. Bernar­dine Dias, pro­fes­sor at CMU and founder of Tech­Bridge­World, said in an arti­cle for Robot­ic Trends. Right now, Dias and his col­leagues are research­ing the best way for Bax­ter to inter­act with visu­al­ly impaired peo­ple and best help them get where they need to go. One thing they are exper­i­ment­ing with at the moment is Baxter’s abil­i­ty to see the dif­fer­ence between two bus tick­ets, which will help blind peo­ple get to the right place. 

This tech­nol­o­gy may be a cou­ple of years or decades away, but it brings hope to the 285 mil­lion visu­al­ly impaired peo­ple worldwide. 

Col­lab­o­ra­tive robots like Bax­ter, robots that are able to work hand in hand with humans, are becom­ing more com­mon the indus­tri­al field as well. Com­pa­nies like Fanuc, ABB, Motoman, Uni­ver­sal Robots, and KUKA are man­u­fac­tur­ing their own col­lab­o­ra­tive robots that can work along­side fac­to­ry work­ers safe­ly and effi­cient­ly, sav­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers time and money. 

Are you inter­est­ed in learn­ing more about col­lab­o­ra­tive robots? Give Robots​.com a call at 877−762−6881, and learn how these robots can open a whole new world of automa­tion pos­si­bil­i­ties for your com­pa­ny. You can also reach rep­re­sen­ta­tives online.