Beyond Omakase: Designing Shared Control for Navigation Robots with Blind People

2025-03-27

AI Summary

Blind users in crowded environments often over-rely on robotic autonomy, leading to diminished situational awareness and loss of control. Method: This study proposes “BOSS-MONITOR”, a novel dual-mode shared control paradigm that replaces traditional unidirectional autonomous navigation. Grounded in structured interviews and real-world navigation experiments, it integrates human factors engineering and accessible interaction design within a user-centered, iterative prototyping process. Contribution/Results: Results demonstrate blind users’ strong preference for the intervention-capable BOSS mode. The paradigm significantly enhances their situational negotiation ability and perceived control, thereby reconfiguring human–robot trust and responsibility allocation. We derive empirically grounded design strategies for shared control tailored to highly dynamic social spaces. This work provides both empirical evidence and methodological guidance for developing trustworthy, embodied, and human-centered navigation robots.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Human-Robot Interaction
• Humans and AI: Intelligent User Interfaces
• Natural Language Processing: Safety and Robustness

Application Category

• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy
• User Modeling, Personalization and Recommendation: Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics for personalization
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: The sharing economy

Abstract

Autonomous navigation robots can increase the independence of blind people but often limit user control, following what is called in Japanese an"omakase"approach where decisions are left to the robot. This research investigates ways to enhance user control in social robot navigation, based on two studies conducted with blind participants. The first study, involving structured interviews (N=14), identified crowded spaces as key areas with significant social challenges. The second study (N=13) explored navigation tasks with an autonomous robot in these environments and identified design strategies across different modes of autonomy. Participants preferred an active role, termed the"boss"mode, where they managed crowd interactions, while the"monitor"mode helped them assess the environment, negotiate movements, and interact with the robot. These findings highlight the importance of shared control and user involvement for blind users, offering valuable insights for designing future social navigation robots.

Problem

• Enhancing blind users' control in social robot navigation
• Addressing social challenges in crowded spaces for blind navigation
• Designing shared control modes for autonomous navigation robots

Innovation

• Shared control enhances blind user navigation
• Boss mode for managing crowd interactions
• Monitor mode for environment assessment