# Quadruped Guidance Robot for the Visually Impaired: A Comfort-Based Approach

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.03927 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2203.03927/

## Key facts

- Cited by 7 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 8 Mar 2022.

## Built on by (most cited first, 7 of 7)

- [System Configuration and Navigation of a Guide Dog Robot: Toward Animal Guide Dog-Level Guiding Work](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2210.13368/) (2022)
- [GSON: A Group-based Social Navigation Framework with Large Multimodal Model](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2409.18084/) (2024)
- [Transforming a Quadruped into a Guide Robot for the Visually Impaired: Formalizing Wayfinding, Interaction Modeling, and Safety Mechanism](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2306.14055/) (2023)
- [Seeing-Eye Quadruped Navigation with Force Responsive Locomotion Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.04370/) (2023)
- [DogSurf: Quadruped Robot Capable of GRU-based Surface Recognition for Blind Person Navigation](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2402.03156/) (2024)
- [CANINE: Coaching Visually Impaired Users for Interactive Navigation with a Robot Guide Dog](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.19501/) (2026)
- [Position: Assistive Agents Need Accessibility Alignment](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2605.13579/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

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.