시각장애인을 위한 보행안내로봇 개발

Development of Walking Guide Robot for the Blind

In this paper, the prototype of a walking guide robot with tactile display is introduced, and the psychophysical experiment of the tactile recognition for a tactile display is carried out and analyzed. The objective of this research is the development of a walking guide robot for the blind to walk safely. A walking guide robot consists of a guide vehicle and a tactile display device. A guide vehicle, located in the front of the walking blind, detects the obstacle using ultrasonic sensors and offers the information of position and walking direction acquired from GPS module to the walking blind by voice. The tactile display device, located in the handle which is connected with the guide vehicle by cane, offers the processed obstacle information such as position, size, moving, shape of obstacle and safe path, etc. The psychophysical experiments for the threshold of perception and recognition ability of tactile stimulation are carried out by the estimation of the subject group. As a result the appropriate tactile stimulus intensity and frequency to recognize tactile stimulation effectively are discussed and derived.