PRE2017 3 Groep12

Guiding Robot

Group members:

• Anne Kolmans
• Dylan ter Veen
• Jarno Brils
• Renée van Hijfte
• Thomas Wiepking

Coaching Questions Group 12

Introduction

Globally there are about 285 million visually impaired people, of which 39 million are totally blind. There is a shortage of guiding dogs to support all visually impaired persons. For instance in Korea alone, there are about 65 guiding dogs in total and about 45.000 visually impaired. Next to the shortage of guiding dogs, there are also some limitations to their use. For instance, some people are allergic to some dog species or they have a social aversion to them, which makes them outshouted to be guided by a guiding dog. Furthermore, guiding dogs propose some extra tasks for the user, namely they need to be fed, walked etc. Lastly, the training of guiding dogs is very difficult and only 70% of the trained dogs will eventually be qualified to guide the visually impaired. Due to the shortage of guide dogs and support tools for the visually impaired, there is a need for innovative ways to support the visually impaired. Due to the fact that there are already a lot of different robots available we propose to convert an already available robot, in this case a soccer robot, into guiding robots.

Target User Group

The robot that we want to develop is a robot that will replace the guiding dog. This robot will affect not only the visually impaired, but also influence other people in the environment. There are a few different levels of users, namely primary, secondary and tertiary users;

• The primary users are the visually impaired
• The secondary users are the other people in the environment
• The tertiary users are the developers of the robot

The users have different requirement of the robot, which are listed below.

Visually impaired (primary users)

• Making it safe to walk
• Increasing the freedom of movement

The surrounding (secondary users)

• The guiding robot detects cars, bicycles and pedestrians
• The guiding robot guides the user around obstacles
• The guiding robot walks where it is allowed to walks and is safe to walk

Developers (tertiary users)

• That it is easy to adapt the software
• That the guiding robot has as little maintenance as possible
• That the robot is easy to adapt to other users' needs

Plan

We intend to convert a soccer robot, namely the Tech United robot, into a prototype that can guide a visually impaired person in a restricted environment. Our plan to accomplish this;

• Research into:
  • Guiding dogs and how they perform their tasks
  • Different ways of environment perception and object avoidance
  • Tech United robot
• Get into contact with Tech United
• Ask the specifications of the Tech United robot
• Determine what capabilities we can use that already exist in the robot
• Determine what functionality needs to be added
• Add the necessary basic features
• Test the robot with the additional basic features
• Determining possibilities for extra features (for example voice recognition) and possibly incorporate them

Specifications

Here we will provide specifications of different elements of our project.

Environment

• Soccer field at TU/e
• Hard coded environment boundaries (Simulating sidewalk)

Robot

• Floor area of 500mm x 500mm
• Height 783 mm
• Mass 36.3 kg
• Knows location in environment (x and y coordinates in local axis frame)
• Knows orientation in environment (in same local axis frame by means of an angle theta)
• Knows force that is being exerted on robot by user (using a force vector)

Handle

• Actual guide dog approximately 45 cm long
• Actual guide dog attachment under an angle of approximately 45°
• Our guiding robot attachment height of 700 mm
• Our guiding robot 40 cm long

We computed the length of the handle by taking the original height into account and making sure that the grip height corresponds to the original grip height.

The haptic feedback will be delivered with the use of resistance that the robot gives back to the person via the handle. The robot will start to give resistance when it will reach its borders within 3 seconds and when it will reach the border within 0.5 seconds, it will stop and thus provide a lot of resistance to the user, giving them a notion that they reach the border of the specified area.

Progress

In this section we will explain how the project is coming along.

Research (State of the Art)

The State of the Art can be found here.

Tech United

We came into contact with W.J.P. Kuijpers, who is the team leader of Tech United. A meeting was scheduled in which we discussed our plan and what we would like to do with the robot. He was quite enthusiastic about our intentions and together we came up with the first step into accomplishing our goal. This was to program a function, using the C language, that given inputs (The robot's position in x and y coordinates, the robot's orientation as an angle and the force exerted on the robot by the visually impaired as a vector) should return the resistance the robot should exert. Additional information that the robot has are boundaries, represented as lines, which we hard coded. These boundaries represent the side walk where the robot should keep it's user between. We hard code these boundaries since in real life recognizing boundaries of where the user is able to walk is extremely difficult.

Once the robot is able to do is, we will extend the functionality of the robot such that it will see other Tech United robots as dynamic objects in the world and footballs as static objects in the world. This means that we can use the robots to simulate other pedestrians, cyclists, cars, etc.. and footballs as trees, walls, lampposts, etc...

Once we implemented this, we will use the entire soccer field to simulate a supermarket through which the robot will guide it's user.

Functionalities to add

The functionalities we would like to add are mostly explained in the Tech United section. However, to give a simple overview:

• Let the robot guide between hard coded boundaries
• React to dynamic objects in an environment (Represented by other Tech United Robots)
• React to static objects in an environment (Represented by footballs)

The code

The code is open sourced and available on GitHub under an Apache version 2.0 license.

Objectives

Autonomous

We want to accomplish that the robot can navigate itself through an environment, possibly filled with either moving or solid obstacles. This process should be fully autonomously, hence without the input of any user during the navigation process. This goal is important since visually impaired people will not be able to guide the robot through its navigation process. If this was necessary, the complete purpose of the robot is abandoned. Therefore, the only actor involved in this process is the robot itself. The robot must be able to navigate itself and the user on paved area. This type of area is also the kind of terrain an average person walks over the most.

The scanning setup will consist of one or more camera's. The robot will not have advanced radar equipment. Also, the robot will not be able to travel on paths with a height differences, like stairways. The robot must be able to guide exactly one person autonomously through an environment, matching our environmental constraints. This task will be accomplished when a person gets from point A to B safely, e.g. without hitting obstacles on its path. This goal can be accomplished by implementing obstacle recognition software for the attached camera's. Together with an avoidance algorithm, the robot will be able to navigate around obstacles on its path. By using constraints such as no advanced radar equipment and a restricted area type, this goal is realizable.

This goal should be realized within 6 weeks. If the robot is not completely autonomous at this point, there will be no time to make changes in the software and/or hardware of the robot.

Easy to use

The guiding robot must be easy to use for the user. This goal is important since the user's capability of seeing the robot is limited, and any confusion regarding the functioning of the robot must be prevented at all times, since this could lead to dangerous situations for the user. This goal involves both the robot and its user.

The interface of the robot consists of an object the user can hold on to. At all times, the feedback of the robot must be clear to the user. Since the user is visually impaired, the feedback of the robot cannot consist of any visual elements. The feedback can consist at resistance when the user is planning to do an action that could lead to dangerous situations. So if the user pushes the robot into a dangerous direction, the robot will resist. Otherwise, the robot will assist. At all times, it must be clear to the user what the robot is doing and what its status is (e.g. battery status, or any other kind of error). By keeping the user interface simple, it will be realistic to implement.

This user interface that will be easy to use must be defined in week 3 and be implemented in week 7. When the type of user interface is defined, we can already search for methods to implement it in our robot.

Safety guaranteed

At all times, we want the user interacting with the robot to be safe. The purpose of the robot is to prevent accidents regarding their user. If the robot is not programmed in such a way that most risky situations are prevented, it would have no purpose. This goal involves both the user and the robot itself. In each situation the user must be in a position such that the robot can take this position into account regarding safety decisions. For example, the user can be standing behind a robot, holding a handle so that the user will not be anywhere else than behind the robot. Also, the robot must stop and give a signal when the user releases the handle attached to the robot so dangerous situations can be prevented.

This goal can be measured by simulating several scenarios having a dangerous situation, and check whether the robot prevents the user from getting any harm. When the robot passes all scenarios, this goal is reached.

Of course, not all possibly dangerous situations can be modeled and tested. Therefore we limit this goal to prevention of a list of dangerous situations created by us, that covers the most common scenarios in our restricted area. This limitation is required to make this goal realizable for this course. This list of dangerous scenarios and how to tackle them must be finished in week 3, and implemented in week 7.

The code

The code is open sourced and available on GitHub under an Apache version 2.0 license.

Planning

Task	Who	Duration	When
Discuss initial project	All	1h	Week 1
Research	All	10h	Week 1
Subject (wiki)	Anne	2h	Week 1
Users (wiki)	Renée	2h	Week 1
SMART objectives (wiki)	Thomas	3h	Week 1
Approach (wiki)	Dylan	1h	Week 1
Deliverables (wiki)	Dylan	1h	Week 1
Milestones (wiki)	Jarno	1h	Week 1
Planning (wiki)	Jarno	1h	Week 1
Discuss week 1 tasks	All	2h	Week 1
State of the art (wiki)
- Perceiving the environment	Dylan	2h	Week 1
- Obstacle avoidance	Renée	2h	Week 1
- GPS navigation and voice recognition	Thomas	2h	Week 1
- Robotic design	Jarno	2h	Week 1
- Guiding dogs	Anne	2h	Week 1
Meeting preparation	Thomas	1h	Week 1
Meeting	All	1h	Week 1
Determine specific deliverables	All	4h	Week 2
Add details to planning	All	3h	Week 2
Meeting preparation	Jarno	1h	Week 2
Meeting	All	1h	Week 2
Discussing scenario	Renée & Dylan	1h	Week 3
Updating planning	Jarno	1h	Week 3
Contacting relevant organizations/persons	Thomas	1h	Week 3
Meeting Tech United	Thomas, Anne, Renée & Jarno	1h	Week 3
Meeting preparation	Renée	1h	Week 3
Meeting	All	1h	Week 3
Meeting preparation	Anne	1h	Week 4
Meeting	All	1h	Week 4
Meeting preparation	Dylan	1h	Week 5
Meeting	All	1h	Week 5
Meeting preparation	Thomas	1h	Week 6
Meeting	All	1h	Week 6
Presentation preparation	All	20h	Week 7
Presentation	All	1h	Week 7

Milestones

During this project, the following milestones have been determined. They may be expanded once we have a better understanding of how we are going to tackle the project. Especially the decision on whether to use an existing robot or creating a robot will heavily influence these milestones and their deadlines. Note that the planning also lacks details, which will be filled in in week 2.

Milestone	Deadline
Research is complete	Week 1
Hardware is available (either full robot or necessary parts)	Week 3
Robot can scan the environment	Week 5
Robot can keep the user in mind	Week 6
Robot is fully autonomous	Week 6
Robot can guide the user in a restricted area	Week 8

Deliverables

Prototype