Vivo Guide Dog Robot | Ken Suzuki

Project Contributions

Leg design optimization for stair climbing
CAD modeling of entire robot
Electrical subsystem design, spanning power electronics and motor control
Coordination of international contract manufacturing
Generation of engineering drawings

Skills Used

Mechanical Design: OnShape (CAD), Ansys (topology optimization)
Mechatronics: Circuit design, soldering
Robotics Analysis: Python, MATLAB (Workspace analysis, dynamics modeling), URDF generation

Co-Authored Publications

Hwang, H., Suzuki, K., Giudice, N. A., Biswas, J., Lee, S. I., & Kim, D. (2024). Lessons Learned from Developing a Human-Centered Guide Dog Robot for Mobility Assistance. arXiv preprint arXiv:2409.19778. Link to paper
Hwang, H., Xia, T., Keita, I., Suzuki, K., Biswas, J., Lee, S. I., & Kim, D. (2023, May). System Configuration and Navigation of a Guide Dog Robot: Toward Animal Guide Dog-Level Guiding Work. In 2023 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) (pp. 9778-9784). IEEE. Link to paper

Project Description

As the team lead of my senior design project at UMass Amherst, I led the development of a quadruped guide dog robot specialized for guiding blind and low-vision individuals in urban environments. The development of this robot was a continuation of our previous work on guide dog robots published in ICRA 2023.

We identified various gaps in the current quadruped robot market that motivated us to design this specialized robot, namely:

There is no quadruped robot on the market that can both climb standard-sized stairs and fit within the carry-on dimensions for air travel.
Existing quadruped platforms lack vision systems equipped with the field of view required for a guide dog robot.

Constructing our own guide dog robot platform gives us the flexibility to implement our own custom hardware, which is highly beneficial from a user-centered design perspective, allowing us to experiment with various sensors, methods of user interaction, and so on.