Researchers develop Robotic guide dog for blind individuals at UC Berkley. Dogs have always been known to be a man’s warmest friend. They guide them, cuddle them, get playful and express various emotions. And these reasons are enough that we see dogs accompanying their human friends. They take and guide individuals in parks for walk, jog, in streets, convenient stores, and other places as well. But especially for the differently-abled people, having a dog as a friend in life is a boon, undeniably. So, researchers at the University of California have developed a robotic guide dog that can prove to be more than an asset in their lives.
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Robotic guide dog-Features& Purpose
The robotic dog will help humans to move indoors freely, without bumping into objects. The said research is already pre-published on arXiv and is ready for further publishing. Now, Zhongyu Li is a researcher at UC Berkley’s Hybrid Robotics Group and has been actively involved in the said research. He tells that the main purpose of such research is that an individual live dog needs extensive training to guide humans. But the robotic guide dog is based on algorithms and is easily trainable. And these algorithms are also transferrable from one dog to another one, thus creating many replicas. This is not possible in the real-life scenario involving real dogs.
Quadrupedal Robots:
Quadrupedal robots are robots that move and balance on four legs. These types of robots have gained popularity in the recent past, for their ease of use and the service they provide. Because they became affordable, many companies did put them to large-scale productions for commercial use. Their past counterparts were not very economical to purchase, however. The robotic dog guide falls under the category of quadrupedal robots and is a promising substitute to live guide dogs.
