EAGER: Guide Drones for Blind Athletes

EAGER：为盲人运动员提供引导无人机

• 批准号: 1445380
• 负责人: Eelke Folmer
• 金额: $ 7.21万
• 依托单位: Board of Regents, NSHE, obo University of Nevada, Reno
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-09-01 至 2017-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1445380&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EAGER; Guide; Drones; Blind; Athletes

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.

在美国，大约有2500万人患有视觉障碍的人，其中包括130万法律上的盲人。 对于这些人来说，缺乏体育锻炼是一个严重的健康关注，他们的体育活动的机会较少，这些活动提供了维持足够适应性并支持健康生活方式所需的数量和种类，原因有很多：缺乏运动伙伴或视力指导的指南；安全问题；总体上缺乏可访问的活动可供选择。 跑步是一种流行的运动形式，可提供各种心血管健康益处，但是要在户外跑步的盲人必须依靠视力的人来安全地指导他们使用系绳。除了遇到兼容时间表并且愿意一起运动的人面临的挑战外，这种对他人的依赖还对盲人进行锻炼的频率和持续时间构成了重大限制。有人建议，机器人可能会允许残疾人带来更多独立的生活，但以前探索的方法主要涉及接地的速度速度缓慢。 由于跑步的速度比步行快得多，因此这个探索性项目将调查使用无人机（通常称为无人机）安全指导盲人跑步者的使用。 盲人运动员跟随无人机，该无人机仅凭声音就在固定的距离前飞到他/她的前面，没有人类的运动伴侣，也没有束缚来阻碍他/她的跑步能力。 PI将采用一种使用智能手机上的应用程序控制的商业可用的低成本四轮驱动器平台，以探索音频反馈机制，使盲人能够有效地跟随无人机，同时避免障碍并纠正无意识的偏离路线。帮助主题招聘。 这项研究将在建立设计原理并为一种新型的辅助技术奠定基础的同时，为非视觉人类机器人互动做出重大贡献。 该工作的潜在扩展可能涉及将导管无人机用于其他体育活动，例如游泳或骑自行车，在这种情况下，使用接地机器人和皮带是不切实际的。