Robotic assistive devices are able to enhance physical stability and balance. Smart walkers, in particular, are also capable of offering cognitive support for individuals whom conventional walkers are unsuitable. However, visually impaired individuals often need additional sensorial assistance from those devices. This work proposes a smart walker with an admittance controller for guiding visually impaired individuals along a desired path. The controller uses as inputs the physical interaction between the user and the walker to provide haptic feedback hinting the path to be followed. Such controller is validated in a set of experiments with healthy individuals. At first, users were blindfolded during navigation to assess the capacity of the smart walker in providing guidance without visual input. Then, the blindfold is removed and the focus is on evaluating the human-robot interaction when the user had visual information during navigation. The results indicate that the admittance controller design and the design of the guidance path were factors impacting on the level of comfort reported by users. In addition, when the user was blindfolded, the linear velocity assumed lower values than when did not wear it, from a mean value of 0.19 m/s to 0.21 m/s.

机器人辅助设备能够增强身体的稳定性和平衡性。特别是智能助行器还能够为传统助行器不适合的人提供认知支持。然而，视障人士通常需要来自这些设备的额外感官帮助。这项工作提出了一种带有准入控制器的智能步行器，用于引导视障人士沿着所需的路径。控制器使用用户和步行者之间的物理交互作为输入来提供暗示要遵循的路径的触觉反馈。这种控制器在健康个体的一组实验中得到验证。起初，用户在导航过程中被蒙住眼睛，以评估智能步行器在没有视觉输入的情况下提供指导的能力。然后，当用户在导航过程中获得视觉信息时，去除眼罩，重点是评估人机交互。结果表明，导纳控制器设计和引导路径设计是影响用户报告舒适度的因素。此外，当用户被蒙住眼睛时，线速度假定比不戴时更低，从平均值 0.19 m/s 到 0.21 m/s。