Robot-assisted shopping for the blind: issues in spatial cognition and product selection

Research on spatial cognition and blind navigation suggests that a device aimed at helping blind people to shop independently should provide the shopper with effective interfaces to the locomotor and haptic spaces of the supermarket. In this article, we argue that robots can act as effective interfaces to haptic and locomotor spaces in modern supermarkets. We also present the design and evaluation of three product selection modalities—browsing, typing and speech, which allow the blind shopper to select the desired product from a repository of thousands of products.