This paper explores the principles for transforming a quadrupedal robot into a guide robot for individuals with visual impairments. A guide robot has great potential to resolve the limited availability of guide animals that are accessible to only two to three percent of the potential blind or visually impaired (BVI) users. To build a successful guide robot, our paper explores three key topics: (1) formalizing the navigation mechanism of a guide dog and a human, (2) developing a data-driven model of their interaction, and (3) improving user safety. First, we formalize the wayfinding task of the human-guide robot team using Markov Decision Processes based on the literature and interviews. Then we collect real human-robot interaction data from three visually impaired and six sighted people and develop an interaction model called the ``Delayed Harness'' to effectively simulate the navigation behaviors of the team. Additionally, we introduce an action shielding mechanism to enhance user safety by predicting and filtering out dangerous actions. We evaluate the developed interaction model and the safety mechanism in simulation, which greatly reduce the prediction errors and the number of collisions, respectively. We also demonstrate the integrated system on a quadrupedal robot with a rigid harness, by guiding users over $100+$~m trajectories.

翻译：本文探讨了将四足机器人转化为视障人士导盲机器人的原理。导盲机器人具有巨大潜力，可解决导盲动物仅能服务于约2%至3%潜在盲人或视障用户的可及性问题。为构建成功的导盲机器人，本文聚焦三个关键课题：（1）导盲犬与人类导航机制的形式化，（2）建立二者交互的数据驱动模型，以及（3）提升用户安全性。首先，我们基于文献和访谈，采用马尔可夫决策过程对人与导盲机器人团队的寻路任务进行形式化定义。随后，我们收集了三位视障人士和六位正常视力者的真实人机交互数据，开发了名为"延迟牵引"的交互模型，以有效模拟团队的导航行为。此外，我们引入动作屏蔽机制，通过预测并过滤危险动作来增强用户安全性。在仿真中，我们对所开发的交互模型和安全机制进行评估，结果显示模型显著降低了预测误差，安全机制大幅减少了碰撞次数。我们还通过刚性牵引装置，在四足机器人上展示了集成系统，引导用户完成了超过100米的轨迹路径。