{"ID":2832717,"CreatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","UpdatedAt":"2026-06-01T04:54:23.091178241Z","DeletedAt":null,"paper_url":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.06147","arxiv_id":"2512.06147","title":"GuideNav: User-Informed Development of a Vision-Only Robotic Navigation Assistant For Blind Travelers","abstract":"While commendable progress has been made in user-centric research on mobile assistive systems for blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals, references that directly inform robot navigation design remain rare. To bridge this gap, we conducted a comprehensive human study involving interviews with 26 guide dog handlers, four white cane users, nine guide dog trainers, and one O\\\u0026M trainer, along with 15+ hours of observing guide dog-assisted walking. After de-identification, we open-sourced the dataset to promote human-centered development and informed decision-making for assistive systems for BLV people. Building on insights from this formative study, we developed GuideNav, a vision-only, teach-and-repeat navigation system. Inspired by how guide dogs are trained and assist their handlers, GuideNav autonomously repeats a path demonstrated by a sighted person using a robot. Specifically, the system constructs a topological representation of the taught route, integrates visual place recognition with temporal filtering, and employs a relative pose estimator to compute navigation actions - all without relying on costly, heavy, power-hungry sensors such as LiDAR. In field tests, GuideNav consistently achieved kilometer-scale route following across five outdoor environments, maintaining reliability despite noticeable scene variations between teach and repeat runs. A user study with 3 guide dog handlers and 1 guide dog trainer further confirmed the system's feasibility, marking (to our knowledge) the first demonstration of a quadruped mobile system retrieving a path in a manner comparable to guide dogs.","short_abstract":"While commendable progress has been made in user-centric research on mobile assistive systems for blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals, references that directly inform robot navigation design remain rare. To bridge this gap, we conducted a comprehensive human study involving interviews with 26 guide dog handlers, fou...","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.06147","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2512.06147v1","authors":"[\"Hochul Hwang\",\"Soowan Yang\",\"Jahir Sadik Monon\",\"Nicholas A Giudice\",\"Sunghoon Ivan Lee\",\"Joydeep Biswas\",\"Donghyun Kim\"]","published":"2025-12-05T20:57:48Z","proceeding":"cs.RO","tasks":"[\"cs.RO\",\"cs.CV\",\"cs.HC\"]","methods":"[]","has_code":false}