Microsyst Technol (2011) 17:1169–1174
DOI 10.1007/s00542-010-1219-1
TECHNICAL PAPER
Development of a guide-dog robot: human–robot interface
considering walking conditions for a visually handicapped person
Shozo Saegusa • Yuya Yasuda • Yoshitaka Uratani
Eiichirou Tanaka • Toshiaki Makino •
Jen-Yuan Chang
Received: 7 September 2010 / Accepted: 30 December 2010 / Published online: 12 January 2011
Ó Springer-Verlag 2011
Abstract The repletion rate of guide dogs for visually
handicapped persons is roughly 10% nationwide. The
reasons for this low rate are the long training period and the
expense for obtaining a guide dog in Japan. Motivated by
these two reasons, we are developing guide-dog robots.
The major objective is to develop an intelligent human–
robot interface. This paper describes two novel interface
algorithms and strategy to guide visually handicapped
person. We developed new leading edge searching method,
which uses a single laser range finder (LRF) developed to
find the center of the corridor in an indoor environment.
We also developed a new twin cluster trace method that
can recognize the led-person’s walking conditions mea-
sured by the LRF. The algorithm allows the guide-dog
robot to accurately estimate and anticipate the led-person’s
next move. We experimentally verified these algorithms.
S. Saegusa (&)
Education and Venture Creation Division,
Center for Collaborative Research and Community Cooperation,
Hiroshima University, VBL Office 313, Kagamiyama 2-chome,
Higashi-Hiroshima 739-8527, Japan
e-mail: shosaegu@hiroshima-u.ac.jp
Y. Yasuda
Yaskawa Electric Corporation, Kitakyushu, Japan
Y. Uratani
Yamaha Corporation, Shizuoka, Japan
E. Tanaka
Shibaura Institute of Technology, Saitama, Japan
T. Makino
Tokuyama National College of Technology, Tokuyama, Japan
J.-Y. Chang
Massey University, Albany, Auckland 0745, New Zealand
•
The results show that the algorithms are reliable enough to
enable the guide-dog robot and the led-person to maneuver
in a complex corridor environment.
1 Introduction
The repletion rate of guide dogs for visually handicapped
persons is roughly 10% in Japan. Considering the long
training and high cost of guide dogs, it seems to be hard to
increase the repletion rates significantly within a short
period of time. Because of this, we have undertaken
development of a guide-dog robot. Our main goal is to
develop an intelligent human–machine interface (HMI)
between the visually handicapped person and the guide-
dog robot, and it is of engineering, social, and economic
importance.
The tasks for a guide dog include obeying the owner,
notifying the owner of turning points, leading the owner to
the target, detecting and avoiding obstacles, and intelligent
insubordination (Table 1).
The most important of these tasks is guiding the owner
while being aware of his or her walking conditions
(walking speed, etc.). Since the owner is visually impaired,
his or her interaction with the dog is the key to successful
guiding. Tate et al. (1978) investigated a control method to
detect the distance between a human and a mobile robot by
using a hardcoded classical control algorithm. However,
this method was not able to handle various walking con-
ditions. Few studies have focused on this subject area, and
hence, we had to begin our development by studying a
guiding system that could handle various user walking
conditions. Yamada et al. (2003) proposed a steering rope
method using a force sensor measuring in three Cartesian
axes and three Euler rotational axes to serve as the
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Table 1 Tasks of a guide dog
Role
(1) Obey owner
(2) Notify owner
(3) Lead owner to target
(4) Detect and avoid obstacles
(5) Intelligent in subordination
controller from the person to the dog like a dog’s harness.
This method could detect the guide dog’s movements and
measure dynamical values under different walking condi-
tions. However, its measurement accuracy and robustness
with regard to the various kinds of motion needed to be
improved and the signaling process needed to be made
simpler. Yamada et al. (2005) and Kurachi et al. (2005)
proposed guiding visually impaired pedestrians with
mobile devices and integrated sensor networks in streets,
underground walkways, and buildings. This approach
requires extensive infrastructure, which is expensive and
can’t meet individual needs.
As opposed to complex systems such as Guide Cane
developed by Ulrich and Borenstein (2001) and the array of
electronic sensors proposed by Ando (2003), the present
study’s aim is to produce a lightweight mobile guide-dog
robot. Such a robot would have a simple mechanism and a
small mechatronics system to allow it to operate in rough
conditions, as discussed by Shkolnik et al. (2009). While
the size of the robot should be small for the sake of
mobility, the HMI should be intelligent and easy to operate.
Our work is based on the framework developed by Saegusa
et al. (2010), in which the mobile guide-dog robot could
avoid obstacles in a corridor environment. However, this
framework’s calculation efficiency and detection ability
should be improved and calculation cycle needs to be
faster. Hence, our objectives for this study were to develop
a new leading edge search method for detecting obstacles
and corridors, and a novel method for the robot to keep
pace with the owner. To this end we developed new
algorithms and verified them in our prototype guide-dog
robot.
2 Leading system
To create a HMI for the robot to be operated intelligently in
an indoor environment, we developed two novel algo-
rithms, namely the leading edge searching (LES) method
for circumstance detection, and the twin cluster trace
(TCT) method for follower detection. An illustrative
example of these methods is shown in Fig. 1. The mobile
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Description
The dog easily obeys the owner’s commands
The dog nudges the owner when to turn
The dog leads the owner to the target
The dog detects and avoids obstacles that may hinder or endanger
the owner
The dog does not obey orders that would lead into danger
Obstacle
Wall Detected Wall
center of
corridor
Side &
Obs.
60°
Detecting
Area 120°
Leading
edge
candidates
Foot-recognizing area
(1.2m x 1.2m)
Fig. 1 Illustrative example of guide-dog mobile robot operation
based on profile of the follower’s legs in an indoor environment
robot is indicated by shaded rectangle boxes in the center,
and the profile of the follower’s legs is depicted by a couple
of dashed circles. The robot is designed to detect obstacles,
move around them, and be aware of its surroundings
(walls, obstacles, and the follower’s legs). The human
follower, as shown in Fig. 2, simply follows the robot,
while the robot detects the follower’s movement by using a
laser range finder mounted on the front to measure the
profile of the follower’s shins.
2.1 Leading edge searching method
A laser range finder (LRF) with a detecting arc of 240° is
used to detect both sides of the corridor. As shown in
Fig. 1, the LRF’s detection arc is divided into three areas.
The centre area having a 120° span is reserved for human
motion detection, whereas the 60° spans to the robot’s right
and left sides are for objection detection. The sensor of the
LRF is located 20 cm above ground level, a height at
Microsyst Technol (2011) 17:1169–1174
follower
Shins
z 600 mm from the LRF to its right and left. The procedure
Fig. 2 Guide-dog mobile robot and follower
which it can detect the follower’s shins in motion. The
robot’s surroundings within the two 60° spans can be
ascertained by searching for leading edges of objects with
the LRF. The LES method to identify leading points among
measured points is as follows.
1. The shortest normal distance between the LRF and
corridor walls is found. The leading edge is identified
and updated when the current measured distance is
shorter than the previous one.
2. If a large change in the LRF signal occurs, the
measured point is taken to be a candidate point of a
leading edge.
3. More points from the front of the robot are scanned.
4. When a shorter distance is measured, the leading edge
point is re-assigned. If there is no closer point, the
previous point remains the leading edge.
Obstacles that are near the walls contribute to the
leading edges because they are the nearest objects to the
robot. A complete scan cycle to ascertain the corridor
Fig. 3 Flow of TCT method
1171
environment involves the LRF scanning on both sides of
the robot.
2.2 Twin cluster trace method
For the person to follow the guide-dog robot easily, we
define the detecting zone, as shown by the 1.2 m2 dashed
rectangle box containing two circular leg shapes in Fig. 1,
to a box from -400 to -1,600 mm behind the robot and
to detect the follower’s shin motion using scanned data
from the LRF is shown in Fig. 3 and contains the following
steps:
Step 1 Make a cluster consists of closer measured points.
An ideal cluster should have the size of a human
foot.
Step 2 Calculate location of the geometric center of each
cluster. The green cross marks shown in Fig. 4a
are the centers of clustered points.
Step 3 Determine center location among two adjacent
clusters. In order to determine the body’s motion,
a human body center, denoted as HBC, is
determined by calculating the location of the
midpoint between the two geometric centers of
the leg clusters. It has been found that under
realistic walking circumstances, the velocity of
HBC is much lower than that of the human leg,
and the body is moving slower and smoother than
the feet.
Step 4 In the next program cycle, a new HBC is
calculated. The distance between the present
HBC and the previous HBC is used to
determine the follower’s moving speed.
End
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a HBC. This position is especially useful when, for instance,

the follower is moving unusually or erratically, e.g., wav-
LRF
ing and staggering, the LRF would pick up a lot of
movement from such multiple muscular-mechanical
actions.
Detected points To be able to track the follower’s motion, the HBC on
Center of the other hand, provides a relatively stable dynamic pattern
Clustered points for the present application.
When the final position of the HBC is decided, we
multiply with the following weighting function:
 1
Esq dist ¼ C  dx2 þ  dz2 ð* C [ 1Þ ð1Þ
Obstacles C
where E is the possibility function of the foot, C is the
weighting function (considered walk characteristics), delta
Feet of x is forward steps, and z is lateral movements in a step.
follower
Since people usually walk forward along a relatively
Foot matching area straight line, by weighting stable motions, the above
algorithm and weighting function can better detect and
identify the follower. This study used an experimentally
b determined value of C = 1.5.
LRF

3 Prototype robot and experimental setup

Candidate position of
person’s body The prototype guide-dog robot (named DUMBO) consisted
Current body-center of two driving wheels, one steering wheel, and a LRF
position estimated
equipped on the top of vehicle as a head marker, as shown
in Fig. 2. A small-sized personal computer (PC) acquired
The Nearest the distance data from the LRF. The control signals were
candidate
generated by the inside processor and transferred to the PC
in the robot, the same as in the work presented by Saegusa
et al. (2010). Two control methods were used to the lead
human follower: one is to steer the robot using detected the
center of the corridor and obstacles through the LES
method, and the other is to determine the follower’s speed
by using the TCT method. The test environment was a
2.2 m wide and 20 m long corridor, having doors, a dark-
Positions in air intake, and dust box, as shown in Fig. 5. The speed
previous scan
control for the robot was set to be proportional to the
Fig. 4 a. Pictorial illustration for Steps 1 and 2 of TCT method. HBC’s speed with a maximum allowable speed of
b. Schematic diagram of search method for finding the nearest HBC 800 mm/s when the distance between the robot and the
to estimate next step follower was within 400 mm. The robot waited for the
follower by stopping its motors when user-robot distance
Step 5 On the basis of the HBC history, the next nearest was over 1,200 mm.
HBC is estimated, as illustrated in Fig. 4b, by
calculating the location of the midpoint between
cluster geometric centers. The nearest HBC is
4 Evaluation system
then used to control the maneuvering speed of the
mobile guide-dog robot.
An independent evaluation system using secondary LRF
In Step 3, HBC is assumed to be at the midpoint and TCT algorithms was developed to validate the guide-
between the centers of each foot. This assumption is dog system. Because the robot and follower’s feet were
important for providing stable tracing of the follower’s simultaneously detected by the LRF on the robot and the

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Experimental circumstances

Robot

Obstacle
2.2m

Fig. 5 Indoor corridor setup for the experiments

3m
Wall

Obstacle
Feet of follower
2.2m

Fig. 7 Trace of the robot and follower

marker

robot treated the person as a moving obstacle and tried to

Wall
Fixed LRF (Rapid-URG)
Fig. 6 Location of the secondary fixed LRF in the experimental
corridor environment
secondary LRF, the LRF of the evaluation system was set
off the center of the corridor, at 35 cm above the floor, to
avoid interference as illustrated in Fig. 6.
5 Experimental results
The measured follower’s motion, marked as magenta
crosses, the guide-dog robot’s motion, marked as blue
circles, the obstacles and walls of the corridor, marked as
red squares obtained by both the guide-dog LRF and the
secondary LRF are illustrated in Fig. 7. The green dia-
monds in the figure represent the center locations of the
clustered points. As one can observe, the guide-dog mobile
robot with the LES and TCT methods successfully led the
follower around in the corridor.
To show the effectiveness of the combined LES-TCT
method in leading a visually impaired person, an experi-
ment was conducted in which one person passed the guide-
dog robot and the human follower as shown in picture in
Fig. 8. In this experiment, the person walks up from behind
the follower on the left side closer to the left wall (marked
as dark brown circles in the measurement plot in Fig. 8).
The guide-dog robot working with the combined algorithm
was not affected by the person’s passing the follower. On
the other hand, once the person had passed the follower, the
lead the follower away from collision.
The traces in Figs. 7 and 8 demonstrate that our new
algorithms are effective in helping the robot to lead the
human follower in walking down the centre line of the
corridor. They also show that the algorithms help the robot
and follower to avoid obstacles and other pedestrians.
Figure 9 shows the relative speeds of the robot relative to
the follower. It means when the follower is closer to the
robot, the robot moves faster. That is because the speed
control is designed to be proportional to the distance
between the human and the robot. With the new algo-
rithms, the overhead computation time to control the guide-
dog robot is 100 ms which compares well with the over-
head of 200 ms from the previous work in Saegusa et al.
(2010).
6 Conclusion
We devised two new algorithms, namely LES method for
circumstance detection and TCT method for follower
detection, and implemented them in a prototype guide-dog
robot. They were experimentally verified to be effective in
guiding viewing impaired persons in an indoor circum-
stance. We arrived at the following conclusions in our
study:
1. The LES method ensures the robot successfully
maneuvers around obstacles in a corridor environment.
2. TCT method is robust in tracking the human follower.
It also reduces computation time significantly to allow
a faster response for the guide-dog robot to respond to
human motions.

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Fig. 8 Picture showing a person passing the guide-dog robot and human follower (to the left), and the corresponding LRF measurement result
(to the right)
Fig. 9 Measured and designed relative velocity of robot with respect
to the follower
The present system and the proposed detection algo-
rithms would be useful for visually impaired persons. In the
future, enhancement of the interface and the communica-
tions between the human follower and the guide-dog robot
will be the key to increasing the robustness of the HMI in
dealing with various situations.
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