“To alleviate the problems of navigating large and unstructured environments, we propose the cWalker, a walking aid that detects and interprets the surrounding environment and suggests to the user a safe path.
A key problem is how to do this “gently”. This is a hard problem. On the one hand, we want the user to be in charge of the final decisions and to move as he/she feels more appropriate. On the other, we need to guide her/him safely along the planned path. To find a balanced solution between these conflicting goals we propose an innovative paradigm: steering by brakes. The system operates on the brakes of the walker only when the user deviates significantly and preserves as much as possible her/his freedom of motion”.
daliproject 