Thank you for your interest in Project Guideline!

Currently, someone who is blind or low-vision typically uses sighted assistance from a guide dog or a sighted individual to walk or run for exercise. To help provide more independence, the Project Guideline team has built an experimental technology that leverages on-device machine learning, allowing someone to use a mobile phone, headphones, and a guideline painted on the ground to independently walk and run.

Project Guideline is an early-phase research project, created with and for people who are blind and low vision. To start, we collaborated with the non-profit organization, Guiding Eyes for the Blind and their CEO, Thomas Panek.

Today, Thomas can use his phone's camera as a sensor to detect a guideline (a painted line) on the ground. With this guideline, the app is able to approximate Thomas' position and direct him with audio cues to stay in proximity to the line while running. It all runs locally on the phone, and without internet connection. At this early stage, the technology supports only two locations and requires a facilitator for safe operation.

This research is just the beginning and we're excited about the technical challenges ahead. To continue our research, we hope to collaborate with more organizations to help paint guidelines in their communities and individuals who are blind and low vision to give us additional feedback. If you would like to connect with our team, please fill out this form and we will reach out to you if applicable.

For general project updates and announcements, be sure to check back at blog.google.com and follow us on Twitter (@GoogleAccess).