A method to detect the sudden stopping in an assistive robot for the visually impaired people

To enhance the autonomy of assistive robots for people with visual impairments, the Blind-assistive aUtonomous Droid Device (BUDD-e) program has been launched to emulate the role of a guide dog. BUDD-e consists of two main components: YAPE, an autonomous vehicle for navigation, and a novel smart tether system for safe user guidance. The study focuses on a method to detect when the user suddenly stops in order to avoid excessive tugging. The proposed method uses a Time-Domain Signal-Threshold-Based method, which involves selecting appropriate signals and threshold values to differentiate between normal movement and stopping events. Experiments show the tether force signal plays the most crucial role in accurately identifying stops and we study the trade-off involved in selecting this force threshold.