An important new iteration of the robotic seeing eye dog was shown to the world this week, when Glasgow University showed off RoboGuide, an AI-powered quadruped for visually impaired people. The future for robotic canine assistants looks not just commercially huge, but also massively empowering for the world’s one-third of billion visually impaired people.
Replacing a real “seeing eye dog” with a robot guide dog might seem like a step backwards, particularly considering the life-affirming nature of the inter-species collaboration and the obvious emotional bond.
That’s until you realize that only one in every 15,000 visually impaired people has a service dog of any kind.
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