AI-powered smart glasses for sensing and recognition of human-robot walking environments

Environment sensing and recognition can allow humans and robots to dynamically adapt to different walking terrains. However, fast and accurate visual perception is challenging, especially on embedded devices with limited computational resources. The purpose of this study was to develop a novel pair of AI-powered smart glasses for onboard sensing and recognition of human-robot walking environments with high accuracy and low latency. We used a Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller and an ArduCam HM0360 low-power camera, both of which interface with the eyeglass frames using 3D-printed mounts that we custom-designed. We trained and optimized a lightweight and efficient convolutional neural network using a MobileNetV1 backbone to classify the walking terrain as either indoor surfaces, outdoor surfaces (grass and dirt), or outdoor surfaces (paved) using over 62,500 egocentric images that we adapted and manually labelled from the Meta Ego4D dataset. We then compiled and deployed our deep learning model using TensorFlow Lite Micro and post-training quantization to create a minimized byte array model of size 0.31MB. Our system was able to accurately predict complex walking environments with 93.6% classification accuracy and had an embedded inference speed of 1.5 seconds during online experiments using the integrated camera and microcontroller. Our AI-powered smart glasses open new opportunities for visual perception of human-robot walking environments where embedded inference and a low form factor is required. Future research will focus on improving the onboard inference speed and miniaturization of the mechatronic components.