A Columbia Engineering research team drew inspiration from the traditional blind staff.
The result is a “robotic stick,” an assistant equipped with a LiDAR laser that offers the ability to “touch” objects with light to help traverse a space.
Canine (from “Dog”, stick) is the name of this device that redefines the concept of spatial autonomy and improves walking stability for everyone, blind and blind.
According to a preliminary survey carried out by the team, 35% of people between 75 and 80 years old suffer from some form of motor problem (compared to 4% of people between 18 and 49 years old). These figures are destined to grow, given the trend observed. Today the gap between "young" and "old" is around 7 to 1. For every person aged 75 and over there are 7 under 75. By 2050 this ratio will become 5 to 1. Smarter assistive technology will be indispensable.
The smart sticks
An approach that has also been successfully attempted in the past is that of the intelligent stick. Several devices have been developed, some decidedly geared towards Blind with position sensors. Others oriented towards diagnostics, with meters heartbeat or other, capable of reading the patient's condition during use.
In fact, although the concept of a “cane” is easier to embrace, it is more about the gentle hands of robotic assistants that help people move forward when walking becomes more difficult.
canine
The task of the Columbia prototype is precisely this: to offer a gentle hand and a safe ride. The device consists of a robotic base that monitors the user during his movements and moves accordingly, and a robotic cane that takes into account both the user's stresses and the indications from its base.
The cane, in essence, collects information from the base and offers gentle feedback to the user's hand, to help him orient himself.
The research
To train Canine, the test subjects (12 perfectly healthy volunteers) walked up and down thousands of times along a strip equipped with sensors. They did this by wearing a VR helmet that provided them with visual models with different discomforts (lateral disturbances, partial blindness, other types of interference corresponding to various pathologies). The routes were then repeated with the help of Canine, which collected the data and compared them with previous ones. The result is a considerable improvement in the stability of the subjects.
The project paper is available in the Automation Letters magazine. Here is a short video showing the test phases:
“The next phase of research will be a test on elderly patients to enrich Canine with increasingly detailed data,” says the professor Sunil Agrawal, director of the Robotics and Rehabilitation Laboratory, which leads the research.
Agrawal and his colleagues are confident that Canine will be an economical and effective solution to a need increasingly present on planet, that of proceeding to increasingly advanced ages at a more stable pace.
