Guidance robots that can guide people and avoid various obstacles, could potentially be owned by more visually impaired people at a fairly low cost. Most of the previous guidance robots for the visually impaired ignored the human response behavior and comfort, treating the human as an appendage dragged by the robot, which can lead to imprecise guidance of the human and sudden changes in the traction force experienced by the human. In this paper, we propose a novel quadruped guidance robot system with a comfort-based concept. We design a controllable traction device that can adjust the length and force between human and robot to ensure comfort. To allow the human to be guided safely and comfortably to the target position in complex environments, our proposed human motion planner can plan the traction force with the force-based human motion model. To track the planned force, we also propose a robot motion planner that can generate the specific robot motion command and design the force control device. Our system has been deployed on Unitree Laikago quadrupedal platform and validated in real-world scenarios.

翻译：能够导引人员并避开各种障碍物的导引机器人，有望以较低成本被更多视障人士拥有。以往的视障导引机器人大多忽略了人体的反应行为与舒适度，将人视为被机器人拖拽的附属物，这可能导致对人员导引不精确，且人员所受牵拉力出现突变。本文提出了一种基于舒适度理念的新型四足导引机器人系统。我们设计了一种可控牵拉装置，可调节人与机器人之间的长度和力，以确保舒适性。为了实现人员在复杂环境中安全、舒适地被导引至目标位置，我们提出的人体运动规划器能够结合基于力的人体运动模型规划牵拉力。为跟踪规划的力，我们还提出了机器人运动规划器，可生成具体的机器人运动指令并设计力控制装置。本系统已在Unitree Laikago四足平台上部署，并在真实场景中进行了验证。