# "I am the follower, also the boss": Exploring Different Levels of Autonomy and Machine Forms of Guiding Robots for the Visually Impaired

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2302.03481 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2302.03481/

## Key facts

- Cited by 6 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 7 Feb 2023.

## Built on by (most cited first, 6 of 6)

- [Open Scene Understanding: Grounded Situation Recognition Meets Segment Anything for Helping People with Visual Impairments](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.07757/) (2023)
- [DRAGON: A Dialogue-Based Robot for Assistive Navigation with Visual Language Grounding](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2307.06924/) (2023)
- [Artificial Intelligent Disobedience: Rethinking the Agency of Our Artificial Teammates](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2506.22276/) (2025)
- [GuideNav: User-Informed Development of a Vision-Only Robotic Navigation Assistant For Blind Travelers](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.06147/) (2025)
- [Seeing-Eye Quadruped Navigation with Force Responsive Locomotion Control](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2309.04370/) (2023)
- [ShelfAware: Real-Time Semantic Localization in Quasi-Static Environments with Low-Cost Sensors](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.09065/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Guiding robots, in the form of canes or cars, have recently been explored to assist blind and low vision (BLV) people. Such robots can provide full or partial autonomy when guiding. However, the pros and cons of different forms and autonomy for guiding robots remain unknown. We sought to fill this gap. We designed autonomy-switchable guiding robotic cane and car. We conducted a controlled lab-study (N=12) and a field study (N=9) on BLV. Results showed that full autonomy received better walking performance and subjective ratings in the controlled study, whereas participants used more partial autonomy in the natural environment as demanding more control. Besides, the car robot has demonstrated abilities to provide a higher sense of safety and navigation efficiency compared with the cane robot. Our findings offered empirical evidence about how the BLV community perceived different machine forms and autonomy, which can inform the design of assistive robots.