While commendable progress has been made in user-centric research on mobile assistive systems for blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals, references that directly inform robot navigation design remain rare. To bridge this gap, we conducted a comprehensive human study involving interviews with 26 guide dog handlers, four white cane users, nine guide dog trainers, and one O\&M trainer, along with 15+ hours of observing guide dog-assisted walking. After de-identification, we open-sourced the dataset to promote human-centered development and informed decision-making for assistive systems for BLV people. Building on insights from this formative study, we developed GuideNav, a vision-only, teach-and-repeat navigation system. Inspired by how guide dogs are trained and assist their handlers, GuideNav autonomously repeats a path demonstrated by a sighted person using a robot. Specifically, the system constructs a topological representation of the taught route, integrates visual place recognition with temporal filtering, and employs a relative pose estimator to compute navigation actions - all without relying on costly, heavy, power-hungry sensors such as LiDAR. In field tests, GuideNav consistently achieved kilometer-scale route following across five outdoor environments, maintaining reliability despite noticeable scene variations between teach and repeat runs. A user study with 3 guide dog handlers and 1 guide dog trainer further confirmed the system's feasibility, marking (to our knowledge) the first demonstration of a quadruped mobile system retrieving a path in a manner comparable to guide dogs.

翻译：尽管针对盲人及低视力人群的移动辅助系统的用户中心研究已取得显著进展，但直接指导机器人导航设计的参考依据仍较为匮乏。为填补这一空白，我们开展了一项综合性人因研究，包括对26名导盲犬使用者、4名盲杖使用者、9名导盲犬训练师及1名定向行走训练师的访谈，并进行了超过15小时的导盲犬辅助行走观察。经去标识化处理后，我们将数据集开源，以促进面向盲人及低视力人群辅助系统的人本化开发与科学决策。基于这项基础性研究的洞见，我们开发了GuideNav——一种纯视觉的示教-复现导航系统。该系统受导盲犬训练及协助方式的启发，能够通过机器人自主复现明眼人演示的路径。具体而言，GuideNav构建示教路径的拓扑表征，将视觉地点识别与时间滤波相结合，并采用相对位姿估计器计算导航动作——整个过程无需依赖激光雷达等昂贵、笨重且高功耗的传感器。实地测试中，GuideNav在五种室外环境下持续实现了公里级路径跟踪，即使在示教与复现运行间存在显著场景变化时仍保持可靠性。一项涉及3名导盲犬使用者和1名导盲犬训练师的用户研究进一步验证了系统的可行性，这标志着（据我们所知）首次实现四足移动系统以类导盲犬方式完成路径复现的实证演示。