A Co-Robotic Cane for blind navigation

This paper presents a new robotic navigation aid, called Co-Robotic Cane (CRC). The CRC uses a 3D camera for both Pose Estimation (PE) and Object Recognition (OR) in an unknown indoor environment. The 6-DOF PE method determines the CRC´s pose change by an egomotion estimation method, called Visual Range Odometry (VRO), and the Iterative Closest Point (ICP) algorithm and reduces the pose integration error by a pose graph optimization algorithm. The PE method does not require any prior knowledge of the environment. The OR method detects indoor structures (stairways, doorways, etc.) and objects (tables, computer monitors, etc.) by the Gaussian Mixture Models. Some of structures/objects (e.g., stairways) may be used as navigational waypoints and the others for obstacle avoidance. The CRC is a co-robot. It may detect human intent and collaborate with its user in performing a navigation task. The proposed CRC is the first in its kind.