2023-10-12 05:30:00
Médor has concerns… Students from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland, are working on the development of a robotic guide dog for blind or visually impaired people. Through their research called the Robodog Flagship Project, they hope to help them navigate their daily lives when owning a live guide dog can be very expensive.
In fact, if the canines are given free of charge by the associations, their training, which takes several years, can cost up to 25,000 euros! Not to mention the food and veterinary costs to be paid during his ten years of life… Enough to slow down more than one person from adopting a four-legged companion, however adorable he may be… According to the ministerial delegation to accessibility, only 1,500 people have a guide dog while France has around 1.7 million visually impaired people.
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Sensors and computing units
“Guide dogs are very expensive to train, our goal is to develop a robotic system capable of orienting itself autonomously in an unfamiliar environment and guiding blind people while avoiding obstacles,” explains Davide Plozza, doctoral student at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, in a video published on the establishment’s website. “To achieve this objective, we use a commercially available robot dog to which we add hardware such as new sensors and computing units,” he adds.
The quadruped robot, the brand of which the school does not reveal, is surely also very expensive to purchase. Spot, the dog from Boston Dynamics, costs around 75,000 euros, for example. On the other hand, with him, no droppings to pick up, nor unwanted barking. So, are you going to swap your sweet doggie and his affectionate licks for a Robodog?
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