EAGER: Guide Drones for Blind Athletes

美国大约有2500万视力障碍者，其中包括130万合法失明的人。缺乏体育活动对这些人来说是一个严重的健康问题，他们参加体育活动的机会较少，因为体育活动提供了维持足够健康和支持健康生活方式所需的数量和种类的刺激，原因有几个：缺乏锻炼伙伴或与之一起锻炼的有视力的导游；安全问题；以及普遍缺乏可供选择的无障碍活动。跑步是一种流行的运动形式，对心血管健康有多种益处，但要在户外跑步，盲人运动员目前必须依靠视力正常的人来安全地使用系绳引导他们；除了遇到日程安排一致、愿意一起锻炼的人之外，对其他人的依赖还严重限制了盲人锻炼的频率和持续时间。有人建议，机器人可能会让残疾人过上更独立的生活，但之前探索的方法主要涉及停飞的机器人以缓慢的速度移动。由于跑步的速度比步行快得多，这个探索性项目将调查使用无人驾驶飞行器(通常称为无人机)来安全地引导盲人跑步者。盲人运动员跟随无人机，无人机在他/她前面以固定的距离飞行，仅凭声音，没有人类锻炼同伴，也没有绳索阻碍他/她的跑步能力。PI将使用一个商业上可用的低成本四轴飞行器平台，该平台通过智能手机上的一个应用程序进行控制，以探索音频反馈机制，使盲人跑步者能够有效地跟随无人机，同时避开障碍物，并纠正无意偏离航线。PI已经获得了一名盲人铁人三项运动员的合作，作为该项目的顾问，就设计问题提供反馈，参与早期试验，并帮助受试者招募。本研究将为非视觉人与机器人的交互做出重要贡献，同时确立设计原则，为一种新的辅助技术奠定基础。未来这项工作的潜在扩展可能涉及使用导游无人机进行其他体育活动，如游泳或骑自行车，在这些活动中，使用接地机器人和皮带是不切实际的。

There are approximately 25 million people with visual impairments in the United States, including 1.3 million who are legally blind. Lack of physical activity is a serious health concern for these individuals, who have fewer opportunities to engage in physical activities that provide the amounts and kinds of stimulation necessary to maintain adequate fitness and to support a healthy lifestyle, for a number of reasons: a lack of exercise partners or sighted guides with whom to exercise; safety concerns; and a general lack of accessible activities to choose from. Running is a popular form of exercise that offers various cardiovascular health benefits, but to run outdoors blind athletes must currently rely on a sighted person to safely guide them using a tether; in addition to the challenge of meeting someone who has a compatible schedule and is willing to exercise together, this dependency on others puts significant constraints on the frequency and duration with which blind individuals can exercise.It has been suggested that robots may allow individuals with disabilities to lead more independent lives, but the approaches that have previously been explored primarily involve grounded robots moving at slow speeds. Because running is performed at a much faster pace than walking, this exploratory project will investigate the use of an unmanned aerial vehicle (commonly referred to as a drone) to safely guide a blind runner. The blind athlete follows the drone, which is flying ahead of him/her at a fixed distance, on the basis of sound alone, with no human exercise companion and no tether to impede his/her ability to run. The PI will employ a commercially available low-cost quadcopter platform that is controlled using an app on a smartphone, to explore audio feedback mechanisms that allow a blind runner to effectively follow the drone while avoiding obstacles and also correcting for unintentional veering off course.The PI has secured the collaboration of a blind triathlon athlete as a consultant on this project, to provide feedback on design issues, to participate in early trials, and to help with subject recruitment. This research will make significant contributions in nonvisual Human-Robot Interaction while establishing design principles and laying the foundations for a new kind of assistive technology. Potential future extensions to the work could involve the use of guide drones for other physical activities such as swimming or cycling, where the use of a grounded robot and leash is impractical.