Robots as Haptic and Locomotor Interfaces for the Blind

Multidisciplinary Collaboration for Socially Assistive Robotics

Volume

Papers from the 2007 AAAI Spring Symposium

Contents

To ensure independence, an assistive shopping device must provide the blind shopper with interfaces to the supermarket's haptic and locomotor spaces. In the absence of vision, the egocentric and allocentric frames are known to align best in the haptic space. Robots can function as interfaces to the haptic and locomotor spaces to the extent that they can eliminate the need of frame alignment in the locomotor space and cue the shopper to the salient features of the environment sufficient for product retrieval.