Well-trained guide dogs can also cost upwards of $50,000 to train, making them inaccessible to many who might otherwise benefit. An early version of a robot guide dog “lays down” while its user sits on a bench. “The benefit of a robot guide dog is they can do verbal communication unlike an animal dog,” Georgia Tech Assistant professor Sehoon Ha said in a video interview shared with Popular Science. “We hope this robot can connect to large language models [LLMs] and talk to people.”This diagram shows the top areas researchers want to focus on when designing a reliable robot guide dog. Image: Kareem Knight/College of ComputingDirectly asking blind and partially sighted individuals what they want in a robotic guide dog revealed several other preferences.