PAWSPersonal Assistance Walking System for the Visually Impaired

Resumen

Blindness and vision impairment are among the most common disabilities worldwide. The World Health Organization estimates that 40 to 45 million people are blind, and 135 million have low vision. There are various assistive devices designed to enhance the quality of life for visually impaired individuals. However, there is a notable gap in assistive devices specifically for navigation. Blind individuals often rely on human or animal companions to navigate, which presents its own set of issues. To address these challenges, we propose PAWS, a Personal Assistance Walking System for the visually impaired. PAWS is a robotic quadruped equipped with vision and navigation algorithms, designed to guide a blind person to specific locations in outdoor and urban environments. The base robot is a commercially available model that we modified with new hardware and software tailored to this purpose. We successfully tested PAWS on our university campus, demonstrating its potential as an effective navigation aid for the visually impaired.