Smartphone Based IoT-Controller Framework for Assisting the Blind in Human Robot Interaction

Abstract

In this paper, a novel smartphone-based IoT-Controller Framework is proposed for effective interaction between robots and people who are blind. This framework focuses on assisting visually impaired users in a pick and place task scenario in contrast to previous works, which primarily focus on navigation and localization. The user can give speech commands to the robot using a smartphone application, which is sent to a server for recognition and retrieval of information such as positions and type of object to be grasped. The details are sent to the robot, which performs the commanded task. Preliminary tests with five participants over a total of 20 trials showed that the system had a 85% success rate, and the average time taken for the task to complete was approximately 65 seconds.