Robotic Cane for the Visually Impaired José Varela-Aldás 1(&) , John Guamán 1 , Belén Paredes 1 , and Fernando A. Chicaiza 2 1 SISAu Research Group, Universidad Tecnológica Indoamérica, 180103 Ambato, Ecuador josevarela@uti.edu.ec, davidguaman6@gmail.com, balupards@gmail.com 2 Instituto de Automática, Universidad Nacional de San Juan, 5400 San Juan, Argentina fachicaiza@inaut.unsj.edu.ar Abstract. Currently, there is a growing public interest in improving the quality of life of people with disabilities, being the visual limitation one of them, where different research projects have been developed. Assistance robotics is a branch dedicated to the support in mobility and rehabilitation of people with visual disabilities and other limitations. This work describes the construction and use of a robotic cane to assist people with visual problems. The robot structure is generated by 3D printing, and the electronic system has been designed based on Arduino technology. The robot features include a sensor distance to detect possible collisions, a GPS to track its movements, and two DC motors in caterpillar-like configuration for cane mobility. In addition, the robot has con- nectivity with mobile devices through Bluetooth communication, where the mobile application coordinates the movements of the robot in two ways, manual and autonomous, allowing to reach the desired location and sending the user’s location to the web. This proposal is tested in a structured environment so that patients cast their perspective through a usability test and their characteristics are examined through the analysis of an expert. Keywords: Robotic cane Á Visual impairment Á Mobile robot Á App 1 Introduction The interaction of a living being with its surroundings is carried out through the use of the senses, being the vision one of the fundamental ones that allow both the manip- ulation of objects and the displacement in spaces, whether they are structured or unstructured [1]. However, a condition in the visual sense greatly limits an individual in the way he/she interacts with his environment. In fact, until 2010 approximately 285 million people with visual disabilities were reported in the world, of which 39 million are blind and 246 million have a low vision [2]. To mitigate this problem and provide opportunities for inclusion to people with these limitations, appropriate languages, methods, and techniques have been developed for people to use other senses such as touch and hearing to compensate for visual impairment [3]. Mainly, independent dis- placement is a challenge for people with vision problems, particularly in unstructured © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 M. Antona and C. Stephanidis (Eds.): HCII 2020, LNCS 12188, pp. 506–517, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-49282-3_36