The United States is facing an increasing aging population. As a result, age-dependent vision impairment becomes a more serious problem in contemporary society. Example. Therefore, it is necessary to have some assistive technology to continue thriving.

To combat this issue, we propose a robotic service dog that uses artificial intelligence and Intel technologies to provide aid to those who are visually impaired. Equipped with IR sensors, cameras, ultrasonic sensors, and LIDAR, our robot helps its owner navigate ts owners through different environments, providing an alternative to those who can’t afford the responsibilities of owning a real dog. Paired with Intel’s OpenVINO to boost vision processing performance and obstacle detection, the robot dog can admit audio cues for things it detects within its presence to alert its owners.

This project will address the United Nations' sustainable goals three, “Health and Well-Being,” and goal 10, “Reducing inequalities.”

Some Intel technologies that will be utilized are a mobile Intel i7 11th gen and the OpenVINO toolkit to improve the AI model's performance. Additionally, we are proposing using an Intel Realsense camera to capture depth data and vision data to assist in guiding the robot dog owner further.

Here Charlie! is a project by Larry Le, Kevin Vo, and Ryan Huynh started in late April of 2023.