Interesting idea.  I wonder if it will ever make it out of the lab.


   Source:  Discover, July 1998 v19 n7 p86(4).

Title:  Robo-dog. (robots with sonar vision)(Cover Story)

As head of the mobile robotics Lab at the University of Michigan, Johann
Borenstein helps robots get around, and none of them can see a thing. "It's
always been obvious," he says, "that the technology we have here could be
useful to a blind person." A few years ago, Borenstein took a sonar device
dint helped one of his robots avoid obstacles and adapted it for humans. He
translated the sonar's ultrasonic echoes into audible tones and fed them to
stereo headphones. It didn't work. Blind users trying to interpret those
cues quickly grew frustrated. Apparently getting a machine to detect
obstacles is no big deal, but having it give directions to a human is.
Whether you can see or not, you want something as intuitive as a tug on a
leash.

From here, building the device was relatively simple. A graduate student
mounted a sonar device to a pair of wheels, like an upright vacuum cleaner,
that would take evasive turns, left or right, steering you around an
obstacle, and then continue in the original direction. Borenstein never
intended to reinvent the Seeing Eye dog, but that is exactly where the logic
of the problem led him. So how does his eight-pound GuideCane stack up
against its canine competition? "It's much less expensive than a good guide
dog," about 4,000, he estimates, versus $14,000 for a dog. And his machine
doesn't need to be fed or relieve itself. "Many people who are blind," he
adds, "find it difficult to take care of a dog. But of course, GuideCane
gives no companionship."

Borenstein demonstrated his GuideCane in August 1997, but it still needs
tweaking: it has a habit of deviating from sidewalks and cutting across
lawns. And it would be better, sometimes, not to avoid an obstacle, such as
a wall that happens to have a door. If Borenstein also succeeds in including
global positioning satellite navigation, you could simply say, "Go to the
supermarket on Main Street," and GuideCane would escort you there.




VICUG-L ARCHIVES     http://maelstrom.stjohns.edu/archives/vicug-l.html