Literature Reviews
Reviewed research papers, articles, and publications relevant to digital accessibility.
23 results found tagged assistive robotics.
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Robot-Assisted Social Dining as a White Glove Service
This CHI 2026 paper addresses a gap in the robot-assisted feeding literature: existing systems are almost exclusively evaluated in the lab or the home for solitary dining, leaving public, social contexts such as restaurants largely unstudied. The aut…
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Towards LLM-powered Assistive Drone for Blind and Low Vision Users
Wei and colleagues built and evaluated a voice-based assistive drone prototype for blind and low-vision (BLV) users that leverages GPT-4o in two stages: generating step-by-step Python drone-control code from natural-language commands, and interpretin…
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DiG-Net: Enhancing Human–Robot Interaction through Hyper-Range Dynamic Gesture Recognition in Assistive Robotics
DiG-Net (Distance-aware Gesture Network) addresses a fundamental limitation in gesture-controlled assistive robotics: existing dynamic gesture recognition systems work reliably only within about seven metres of the camera, severely constraining their…
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Eye-Tracking-Driven Shared Control for Robotic Arms: Wizard of Oz Studies to Assess Design Choices
The paper presents two Wizard of Oz studies evaluating an eye-tracking-driven shared-control system for an assistive robotic arm — the 7-DoF Kinova Gen3 — designed for People with Severe Motor Disabilities (PSMD). PSMD here includes people with locke…
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BlindPilot: A Robotic Local Navigation System that Leads Blind People to a Landmark Object
Most indoor-navigation research for blind travellers has focused on what the authors call 'global' navigation — getting from a building entrance to a room, gate, or exhibit. The 'last few metres' of the journey, a body-scale interaction with a specif…
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PathFinder: Designing a Map-less Navigation System for Blind People in Unfamiliar Buildings
Map-based indoor navigation systems for blind travellers (CaBot, NavCog, BLE-beacon apps) work well when a prebuilt map exists, but building and maintaining those maps is labour-intensive and has only been done for a tiny fraction of the world's buil…
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Guiding Blind Pedestrians in Public Spaces by Understanding Walking Behavior of Nearby Pedestrians
Collisions with other pedestrians are one of the most common hazards for blind travellers in public space — 87.8% of blind people report colliding or nearly colliding with pedestrians, bicycles, or obstacles. White canes detect contact rather than ap…
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Enhancing Blind Visitor's Autonomy in a Science Museum Using an Autonomous Navigation Robot
Museums have historically struggled to offer blind visitors the same self-directed, exploratory experience that sighted visitors take for granted. Prior solutions — tactile tours, audio guides, or pre-fixed navigation routes — either require a human …
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Beyond Omakase: Designing Shared Control for Navigation Robots with Blind People
Kamikubo and colleagues investigate how autonomous navigation robots for blind users should balance robot autonomy against user control, arguing that current systems default to what they call 'omakase' — a Japanese term meaning 'I leave it to you' — …
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Field Trials of Autonomous Navigation Robot for Visually Impaired People
This paper reports field trials of AI Suitcase, an autonomous navigation robot shaped like a conventional carry-on suitcase and designed to guide blind and visually impaired (BVI) travellers safely through unfamiliar public spaces. The system traces …