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Robotics News

Robots to Help the Blind 195

Posted by samzenpus from the helper-robot dept.
Timberwolf0122 writes "Computer scientists in the US have developed a robot that could help blind people to shop or find their way around large buildings. Utilising a RFID tags to find products and a laser range finder to avoid obsticals. The prototype was developed at Utah State University, is this the end of guide dogs?"
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Robots to Help the Blind More

Robots to Help the Blind

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  • Good grief what kind of retard came up with 'obsticals'?
  • Assuming that they don't change the stock locations in the store too often, why wouldn't it work?

  • we're almost able to replace their eyes! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @11:34PM (#12438291)
    maybe this effort should be going towards that instead? How far away are artificial eyes that are good enough for a blind person to shop? And if they're good enough to shop, they are probably good enough for a lot of things that that shopping robot won't be good for.
    • Screw blind people. How long until I get my monitor contact lenses? That's what I really want.

    • Re:we're almost able to replace their eyes! (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Artificial eyes are barely good enough to walk around, it's just a bunch of blobs. It'll be a long time before they can be used to read the small letter in a package (so you get the exact variety you want, and not just a similar one). RFID tagged boxes allows looking up the specifics, giving the tag id to the robot and then following, artificial eyes are still far in the future for this kind of use. And we need robots for other things, so it's not one or the other, it's both.

    • Re:we're almost able to replace their eyes! (Score:4, Informative)

      by Kiliani ( 816330 ) on Thursday May 05, 2005 @12:10AM (#12438505)
      In the long run you are probabaly right that artificial vision would be better than a robot (or even a guide dog) - see a recent story on artificial eyes [slashdot.org].

      Right now "vision implants" are not nearly as developed as their cousins, the cochlear implants. Those can help hearing impaired people (re)gain hearing (call it "artificial hearing", if you wish). People with CI's can learn to speak like anyone, although their hearing is still different from "typical" hearing.

      It appears that, compared to the likely cost of developing artificial vision, the robot can be developed for next to nothing. And who knows, maybe it's useful for people with other ailments! Compromise: best to do both.

      Artificial vision, just like cochlear implants, is really, really cool, and could help a LOT of people. I keep my fingers crossed!

      • well, at least we have this [memory-alpha.org]
      • I read these artificial vision stories with a sense of dread. I've been completely blind for my entire life. If I could suddenly see, assuming the level of data input didn't drive me completely mad, I'd have to learn to do absolutely everything over again: I'd have to learn to read, learn colors, learn to navigate around my environment, to orient myself to visual rather than audible clues, to recognize faces and objects by vision rather than sound, etc, etc, etc. I'm betting this would take me at least 1
        • Maybe you could just use your artificial eyes to look at sunsets and other nice stuff (some ladies are very easy on the eyes ;) ), and keep them shut/switch them off the rest of the time.

          My worry is if artificial vision ends up artificially expensive.

          Anyway I wouldn't mind having one or two additional auxiliary "video in" ports, in addition to my eyes, if there weren't any serious side effects.
    • Once there's enough resolution for the blind to use the artificial eyes, those who benefit the most will be those who most recently lost their sight. Essentially, the ability to adapt to and benefit the most will be increase with a ratio corresponding to the length of time since they lost their sight.

      One of the things which babies' bodies learn as they are growing up as infants, is for their eyes to grow & focus; something which is gradual and not a shock to them.

      Imagine someone who was born blind
      • Better yet

        Grow new real eyes, and implant those. Keyed to the recipients DNA so that no rejection occurs.

        Why bother with mechanical solutions when a purely biological one would probably be for the best?

        Not to mention that this technique would be effective in children as well, as the organs would grow as they do.

    • My daughter is blind because she had a stroke before she was born. Her eyes are perfect, but she cannot see.

      Although I think a shopping robot is silly, it would still make this task much easier for my daughter when she is older and wants to be independent.

      -- Len

  • Simple answer: No. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ta bu shi da yu ( 687699 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @11:34PM (#12438292) Homepage
    The answer to this is no, because not all blind people want some impersonal robot. A dog is much nicer as it's alive and can make decisions in the external environment that a robot cannot make.
    • A dog is much nicer as it's alive and can make decisions in the external environment that a robot cannot make.

      A person's even better sometimes.

      Actually, the dog is probably better quite often too...

    • Re:Simple answer: No. (Score:5, Funny)

      by tomhudson ( 43916 ) <barbara.hudson@b ... m ['son' in gap]> on Thursday May 05, 2005 @12:49AM (#12438666) Journal
      At least a robot won't get you into this sort of predicament:
      I LIKE SEEING-EYE DOGS

      The pet store was selling them for five cents a piece. I thought that
      odd since they were normally a couple thousand each. I decided not to
      look a gift horse in the mouth. I bought 200. I like seeing-eye dogs.

      I took my 200 seeing-eye dogs home. I have a big car. I let one drive. His
      name was Sigmund. He was retarded. In fact, none of them were really
      bright. They kept licking their genitals. I laughed.
      Then they bit my genitals. I stopped laughing.

      I herded them into my room. They didn't adapt very well to their new
      environment. They would bark, hurl themselves off of the couch at
      high speeds and slam into the wall. Although humorous at first, the
      spectacle lost its novelty halfway into its third hour.

      Two hours later I found out why all the seeing-eye dogs were so inexpensive:
      they all died. No apparent reason. They all just sorta' dropped dead.
      Kinda' like when you buy a goldfish and it dies five hours later. Damn
      cheap seeing-eye dogs.

      I didn't know what to do. There were 200 dead seeing-eye dogs lying all over my
      room, on the bed, in the dresser, hanging from my bookcase. It looked
      like I had 200 cheap hair pieces.

      I tried to flush one down the toilet. It didn't work. It got stuck.
      Then I had one dead, wet seeing-eye dog and 199 dead, dry seeing-eye dogs.

      I tried pretending that they were just stuffed animals. That worked for
      a while, that is until they began to decompose. It started to smell real
      bad.

      I had to pee but there was a dead seeing-eye dog in the toilet and I didn't want
      to call the plumber. I was embarrassed.

      I tried to slow down the decomposition by freezing them. Unfortunately
      there was only enough room for two seeing-eye dogs at a time so I had to change
      them every 30 seconds. I also had to eat all the food in the freezer so
      it didn't all go bad.

      I tried burning them. Little did I know my bed was flammable. I had to
      extinguish the fire.

      Then I had one dead, wet seeing-eye dog in my toilet, two dead, frozen seeing-eye dogs in
      my freezer, and 197 dead, charred seeing-eye dogs in a pile on my bed. The odor
      wasn't improving.

      I became agitated at my inability to dispose of my seeing-eye dogs and to use the
      bathroom. I severely beat one of my seeing-eye dogs. I felt better.

      I tried throwing them way but the garbage man said that the city wasn't
      allowed to dispose of charred dogs. I told him that I had a wet
      one. He couldn't take that one either. I didn't bother asking about the
      frozen ones.

      I finally arrived at a solution. I gave them out as Christmas gifts. My
      friends didn't know quite what to say. They pretended that they like
      them but I could tell they were lying. Ingrates. So I bit them in
      the genitals.

      I like seeing-eye dogs
    • "The answer to this is no, because not all blind people want some impersonal robot. A dog is much nicer as it's alive and can make decisions in the external environment that a robot cannot make."

      Most blind people don't use dogs. They use sticks. Quite why anyone would swap a low tech but highly effective device for one the size of a washing machine and costing as much as a car, I can't understand.

      Why not have a small device, something like a bluetooth ear piece which tells you where in the shops or airpor
  • ...the robots must stop and dispense oil on a fire hydrant every hour or so.

  • Hell no the end of dogs. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by FireballX301 ( 766274 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @11:35PM (#12438297) Journal
    I have a cousin who is blind and uses a guide dog. A few weeks ago, his dog essentially mauled some burgler attempting a home invasion.

    Robots may be fine and dandy for lab rat use, but in the real world where unexpected things happen, you need to have something that can adapt to emergencies, something that robots won't be able to do for a while.

    • Re:Hell no the end of dogs. (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      In Japan these things come standard with Plasma Rifles.
    • Then obviously you've never seen this movie [imdb.com].

    • Re:Hell no the end of dogs. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by syousef ( 465911 ) on Thursday May 05, 2005 @12:48AM (#12438661) Journal
      I have a cousin who is blind and uses a guide dog. A few weeks ago, his dog essentially mauled some burgler attempting a home invasion.

      I'll trust a well trained dog over a robot/computer any day, and I consider myself a hardened geek. I find animals much more reliable and predictable than any system I've used.

      Plus you get affection - and anyone who brings up virtual pets or robots being affectionate doesn't is self-dillusional and doesn't understand the benefit of a relationship with a real living thing.
      • I find animals much more reliable and predictable than any system I've used.

        Then you should find better systems to use. Animals can be trained and reliable, up to a point. [cnn.com]

        The difference between animals and artificial systems is that when you build things you know how they are made. Animals are closed source, you don't know how they work, all you know is a how a limited set of input/output pairs work. When a machine fails you can debug it, find what went wrong, redesign, rebuild, and retest.

        If I had t

        • Yeah, but when they start talking about AI. It appears a lot of AI designs are pretty nondeterministic compared to programming.

          And complex computer programs aren't that deterministic. Not that reliable and predictable.

          Just select a suitable dog, and it'll be more reliable and predictable than the blind person its supposed to help. Whereas there are many complex computer systems which don't seem to be nearly that reliable and predictable.

          It'll be hard to build a machine that could do as much for a blind p
        • Actually, the primary difference between animals and artificial systems is that artificial systems are more prone to single point of failure problems. Living organisms carry enough redundancy as a result of complex evolution that more often than not unexpected events do not actually result in catastrophic failure.
      • Plus you get affection...
        Well there's always internet porn.
    • Borrow from the latest military hardware [defensetech.org] and mount a 9mm on the robot. Code the firmware to detect intruders, give them a warning and detect hostility, and mow them down if hostility is detected after the warning has begun being given... :)

      (No, I'm not serious. I've played Deus Ex and DX: Invisible War too much to think this is a good idea...)
  • The robot will now proceed to help blind slashdot editors with their spellongzzzz

  • TFA says "no" (Score:3, Funny)

    by EvilStein ( 414640 ) <.ten.pbp. .ta. .maps.> on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @11:36PM (#12438305)
    "People think we're trying to replace guide dogs, but we're not."

    Nope, not going to replace guide dogs. Dogs have excellent senses, robots just have bits & bytes.

    ""We refer to it as a robotic shopping assistant," he told the BBC News website.

    The guide dog won't keep hanging out by the auto parts section. who knows what the robot will do. Maybe subscribe itself to Popular Mechanics when you're not paying attention. ;)

  • No. (Score:5, Informative)

    by dexterpexter ( 733748 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @11:40PM (#12438336) Journal
    No. As someone who was part of a team that worked on building autonomous robots (albeit for the I.G.V.C), I must say that, in my experience, the one thing that cannot be replaced (at least, not yet anyways) is instinct. (Neural Networking or no.) The dog offers companionship and thus a bond, which plays well with the dog's instincts in not just leading the person around and fetching things for them, but protecting them as well.

    If people are concerned with replacing guide dogs (as they have relatively short lives and take a long time to train), they should consider guide horses [guidehorse.com]. You may think I am crazy, but this has been successfully tested and is becoming more popular.

    The horses live to be 25-40 years old, have binocular and monocular vision, and are very intelligent. They also have more instincts about safety than an algorithm, to date, can provide.

    However, the robots are a very neat idea.
    • I also want to tag onto my own post and explain that I was responding to the Slashdot article, not the posted article. The posted article clearly states:

      "People think we're trying to replace guide dogs, but we're not."

      Having RTFA, I must say that the application they are using these robots for is a neat one, as the robots could be used in addition to the guide dogs. It's not like the person is taking the robot home and trying to use it as a method to cross the street. These basically amount to smart

      • These basically amount to smart shopping carts. For the application these bots were intended for, I am sure they will do a lovely job and it's a good idea.

        Wouldn't it just be better to spend some time and energy sensitizing people to the needs of the blind and low-vision, and get them to feel comfortable in offering to help?

        I sometimes feel a bit awkward offering to help, but that doesn't stop me (because it would bother me all day if I actually let that stop me from helping), and its' never been refu

    • Guide horse sounds like a weird idea to me. In my experience, horses tend to be very short tempered when it comes to unexpected things.
      The only vision my imagination lays before me is this: A big truck passes nearby, simultaneously avoiding the blind person and oncoming traffic. To about 100% of horses I have seen, this would be enough to freak them out and make them head for the hills. Now, imagine that one of the tires of the truck exlodes when it is passing you. I would bet couple of euros that the blind
      • Actually, the horses are fitted with rubberized shoes, so their hard hooves are less concern when it comes to scratching and such. If allowed to traffic one area highly, it is likely their weight would become a concern and begin wearing the carpet, but probably no more than carts being pushed with heavy loads. Ideally, the horses wouldn't spend very long working back and forth on the carpet, but I can see where that is a concern. Then again, with the rubbers shoes, this probably makes them less concern t
      • Now, imagine that one of the tires of the truck exlodes when it is passing you ...
        Like you wouldn't have to change your shorts afterwards?

        Besides, when's the last time you saw a truck tire explode (aside from when it's being improperly inflated during installation, or already on fire)? They don't explode. They delaminate. The tread comes off, and the air goes out of the carcass.

        • I didn't see t happening, but last time I saw an exploded truck tire was just yesterday. I see them almost every time I'm on a longer trip on the Finnish roads.
          The tires are not new. They are re-coated over and over again because they are fricking expensive. Atleast here, I think truck tires aren't competelly discarded unless they are damaged beyong re-covering.

          Oh yeah, now that you asked. My house is like 3 meters from a road. There are trucks trafficking next to my house regularly. It was last week when
          • Over here truck tires are regroovable [nebraskatire.com],

            f the word "Regroovable" is on the side of a tire (most truck tires are), the tread grooves may be cut deeper into the tire to give about 50% more tread. This can be done without hurting the integrity of the tire because of an extra thickness of rubber that has been built into the tire during the manufacturing process.

            The Regrooving of truck tires has been done for years. Because of the specialized equipment that this process requires, many tire dealers have chosen n

    • Yes dogs have a short lifespan, but while there are downsides (increased training costs is the one you've mentioned but there are others), there's also positives. New dogs can be trained in newer techniques, with increase in numbers being trained the training cost per animal goes down, and the blind person knows that he/she has a limited time with their animal, so when the animal does die it's less of a shock to the system and they're less likely to become so depressed they're suicidal.

      By the way I do know
  • "We worked out some times when we weren't open and they tested the robot early in the morning."

    Personally, I'd like it better if they were field tested in the afternoon, when the store is open, right about the time when work is getting off. However, A number of visually impaired testers have given enthusiastic feedback...*, so this is still good stuff.

    *Rest of quote - but not all of them were Braille users so were unable to use the Braille interface to find items.
  • ....what about the guide horses? [guidehorse.com]

    Think about the horses!

    Oh the humanity!

  • No (Score:1)

    by birge ( 866103 )
    The prototype was developed at Utah State University, is this the end of guide dogs?"


    No, but it sure sounds like the end of blind people. What is it with AI people? They still can't produce software with the intelligence of a lab mouse, but they've moved on to guiding the blind? Last I checked, people still had trouble getting robots to navigate a building reliably.

    • What is it with AI people? They still can't produce software with the intelligence of a lab mouse, ...
      Self-interest. If they produced something with REAL (as opposed to artificial) intelligence, they'd be out of grant money AND a job.

  • This just in... (Score:4, Funny)

    by isny ( 681711 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @11:50PM (#12438394) Homepage
    I tied my vacuum cleaner to my dog. Will this replace the roomba?
    • I tied my vacuum cleaner to my dog. Will this replace the roomba?

      No. It's better.

      See, now the vacuum, Roomba and your attempt at humour all suck, so that's a lot more suckage than a Roomba alone.

      Soko

      (OK, it's flamebait, but Monday sucked too.)
  • I think it is just an ActivMedia Pioneer robot http://www.activrobots.com/ [activrobots.com] One of these was used for a robotics lab at my university. I didn't get to play with it much, but it contains a full blown PC with linux and an xterm on it.
  • The best way for robots to help blind people is to shove them [newgrounds.com].

  • The canine OS is still better for now (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ScentCone ( 795499 ) on Wednesday May 04, 2005 @11:52PM (#12438407)
    Sure, the dog can't pick out the right canned food on the shelf, but it can see a car coming from two blocks away, sense unstable ground, and pick up on unsavory people's body language in a second. I'm not blind, but walking with my dogs alerts me to things I'd never notice otherwise - they are truly amazing critters. I hope my eyes are good for the rest of my life, but hopefully we'll have direct visual cortex stimulation from implants or some other solution before I have to depend on a mobile robot to help me get around. In the meantime, it's Fido for me.
  • Will they be shover robots or pusher robots? Also, what if the blind people do not have stairs in their house? How will the robots protect them from the Terrible Secret of Space??? This obviously wasn't thought out very well...
    • Do not trust the pusher robot. He is malfunctioning.
    • Get your pak chooie unf here [newgrounds.com]
      The following is provided for the 5 people who don't know what Something Awful is. Transcript as follows:

      Corn_Boy - wassup
      Corn_Boy - what is the time there?
      Lowtax - 11 pm
      Corn_Boy - wow, why are you woking so late?
      Corn_Boy - what kind of work do you do
      Lowtax - VE and SA stuff
      Corn_Boy - whats that
      Lowtax - VE - Virginian Empire SA - Secretary's Alliance
      Corn_Boy - is the secretarys alliance like a union
      Lowtax - Kind of. Mostly we just go over to Marcie's house af

  • It needs one more skill (Score:3, Funny)

    by lheal ( 86013 ) <lheal1999NO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Thursday May 05, 2005 @12:00AM (#12438454) Journal
    ... to beat out man's best friend.

    They have to teach it to like peanut butter.

  • I wonder how long before the robots realise that they can slip high grade oil or lithium ion batteries into the shopping cart instead of the cheap no-brand versions...After all, their "owner" isn't looking...

    Obligitary comment: I for one welcome our new robot shopper overlords...

  • I thought at first that it said "Robots to Help Fix the Blind"

    I LOL'd at the thought of some Short Circuit type robot saying "Number 5 will repair your eyeballz. Sit back and reeeelax" while his shaky uncontrollable limbs bounce about....yikes.

  • Dogs have many uses (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Guide dogs can often do more than merely guide a person while walking:

    1) Can also be trained to fetch things like phones (very useful for when a blind person falls and hurts themselves and then cannot get up), keys, and miscellaneous items that a blind person accidentally drops and then need assistance in finding on the floor.

    2) As another poster mentioned, a guide dog can provide a level of home defense against intruders. I once heard an author on NPR describe how a dog's primary sense is smell with eye

    • Re:Dogs have many uses (Score:2, Interesting)

      by melandy ( 803088 )
      The dog is going to go into a state of extreme alertness and defensiveness and will try to let everyone in the house know about what its discovered irrespective of whether it was trained to be a guard dog or not.

      [snip]

      Dogs [snip] can tell when there is something "wrong" with their master.

      This is absolutely true. Dogs are truly amazing creatures. Dogs in familys with new children are especially intriguing. Most will form an especially close bond with a new baby, and are often more effective at ge
  • I suppose it won't detect those kinds of obstacles until it's too late. Dogs will at least run to save themselves, dragging their blind owner with them.

    It even has an LCD display. I'm sure that'll come in handy.
  • Let's see here, should the blind allow robots to lead them around.?...Hmmm....let me think about that one. [darpa.mil] MMMmmm... No.
  • laser range finder to avoid obsticals

    It couldn't really hurt the blind much, but us people who can still see might find it a bit annoying..... I can just see how a conversation might go:

    Joe: Hey bob, how'd you go blind?
    Bob: I was shopping at walmart when this blind guy walked around the aisle and flashed his laser range finder into my eyes. Now I'm blind too. The bastard.
    Joe: So is that the same gizmo you're now wearing too?
    Bob: Yep
    Joe: Oww my eyes. you just blinded me you idiot.
  • ...Not just for old people anymore.
  • Robot : The road is clear ahead, please walk
    *Walking*
    3
    2
    1
    *CRUNCH*

    Dogs have common sense, robots don't.
  • "...is this the end of guide dogs?"
    No. It's just the beginning. [sonystyle.com] Muuhhaaahaahaa!!!

  • NFB (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It's sad that the National Federation of the Blind, which believes it represents its constituents, thinks of guide dogs as a crutch and would love to replace them with impersonal, imperfect robots.

    Compare the costs (money, effort, expertise) of purchasing and maintaining a guide robot versus a guide dog. Now compare the capabilities of each. Will the robot be self-healing, last a whole day on the equivalent of a bowl of chow, and adapt to changes in the daily routine?

    More importantly, which would you want

  • Cost benefit... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by zxflash ( 773348 )
    Fancy robots are expensive to develop at first but once mass production starts this could be a great alternative to dogs... Considering what it costs to train a dog and the "carrying costs" associated with keeping one...
  • It does not matter if you are white or black, able-bodied or disabled, every American has a right to shop, and if there is any impediment to this right our brilliant scientists will work non-stop to remove it.

    Is this the end of large dogs? Well, not really, dogs can be trained to be much more reliable impulse byuers than a robot.

  • It's just not the same with a robot... (Score:3, Funny)

    by DickeyWayne ( 581479 ) on Thursday May 05, 2005 @01:31AM (#12438823)
    A blind man walks into a store, grabs his guide dog by the tail, and starts swinging him around in circles.

    The clerk runs up. "Sir, can I help you?"

    "Naaa. I'm just looking around."

    Jokes just won't be as funny with robots.
  • Utilising a RFID tags to find products and a laser range finder to avoid obsticals.

    And if you install Ispell and Grammatik, it will also improve their visually disturbing spelling and their jarringly horrendous grammar.
  • No.
    I can say that since I RTFA:
    "People think we're trying to replace guide dogs, but we're not."
  • .. apparently dont include being able to spell and/or use dictionary.com, or ispell.

    -=-
    def:obstical

    No entry found for obstical.

    Did you mean obstacle?

    -=-
    def:obstacle
    obstacle

    One that opposes, stands in the way of, or holds up progress.
  • and a laser range finder to avoid obsticals.

    Can it also be used to scan for typos?
  • I've read several articles about the Japanese designing robots for disabled people too. More have been about nurses for the elderly in a land where there are many old people and too few young who would do this menial work. Besides Japan seems to have a strong popular culture of robots too in entertainment and acceptibility.

  • Seeing eye dogs (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gkearney ( 162433 ) on Thursday May 05, 2005 @10:25AM (#12441108)
    My wife is blind and uses a dog. Seeing Eye Dogs do not, as some believe, lead the blind person to where they want to go. The blind must still know where they want to go and how to get there.

    The dog simply helps them to avoid things like curbs, stairs and so on. It does so by simply stoping at them and waiting for the blind person to give them instructions as to what to do next.

    It is perfetly possible to get lost with a dog.

    We have seen all sorts devices of this type all the time canes with sonar, devices with GPS, you name it. The fact remains that nothing will ever subsitute for proper mobility training for the blind.

  • What, no "we shove bread down blind people's throats" jokes?

    What is slashdot coming to?!

    --Rob

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