Robotic Guide Dog: Leading a Human with Leash Guided Hybrid Physical Interaction

An autonomous robot that is able to physically guide humans through narrow and cluttered spaces could be a big boon to the visuallyimpaired. Most prior robotic guiding systems are based on wheeled platforms with large bases with actuated rigid guiding canes. The large bases and the actuated arms limit these prior approaches from operating in narrow and cluttered environments. We propose a method that introduces a quadrupedal robot with a leash to enable the robotguidinghuman system to change its intrinsic dimension (by letting the leash go slack) in order to fit into narrow spaces. We propose a hybrid physical Human Robot Interaction model that involves leash tension to describe the dynamical relationship in the robotguidinghuman system. This hybrid model is utilized in a mixedinteger programming problem to develop a reactive planner that is able to utilize slacktaut switching to guide a blindfolded person to safely travel in a confined spa