GuideData: Handler-Guide dog Interaction dataset

Dataset Description

GuideData dataset captures how blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals work with guide dogs in real-world contexts.

The dataset is composed of five key elements:

Handler & Trainer Interviews: Transcripts from semi-structured interviews on the daily use, training, and deployment of guide dogs.
Navigation Observations: Videos of experienced handlers and their guide dogs navigating familiar, real-world environments.
Matching Training Observations: Videos documenting the initial familiarization process between a handler and a new guide dog.
Author Blindfold Walks: Video recordings of supervised, blindfolded walking sessions to directly experience and document handler-dog interactions and navigational cues.
Supplementary Data: Includes feedback on robotic guide dog systems and force measurements quantifying the pull from a guide dog's harness.

Participants & Processing

The study includes 40 anonymized participants, including blind and low-vision (BLV) individuals (guide dog and cane users), professional guide dog trainers, and one O&M specialist. Participants had an average of over 24 years of experience using navigation aids.

To protect privacy, all videos were processed to blur faces and license plates, and all personally identifiable information was removed from transcripts. To our knowledge, this is the first comprehensive dataset of its kind. It is available on Kaggle under a CC0 license to support the development of future assistive navigation systems.

Dataset Skeleton

The uploaded dataset on Kaggle is organized in a folder structure. The structure is visualized below:

              
                guidedata-upload/
                ├── IRB-1(74)/
                │   ├── Blindfold in Fidelco (5-6)/
                │   │   ├── images/  - Photos from blindfolded walking sessions at Fidelco
                │   │   └── videos/  - Video recordings from blindfolded walking sessions at Fidelco
                │   ├── Blindfold in Rochester(21-18)/
                │   │   ├── images/  - Photos from blindfolded walking sessions in Rochester
                │   │   └── videos/  - Video recordings from blindfolded walking sessions in Rochester
                │   ├── Transcript/
                │   │   ├── Interview_w_GDT/     - Interview transcripts with guide dog trainers
                │   │   └── Interview_w_subject/ - Interview transcripts with guide dog handlers
                │   └── interview_media(24-7)/
                │       ├── images/  - Photos captured during interview sessions
                │       └── videos/  - Video recordings from interview sessions
                └── IRB-5(76)/
                    ├── S01-Day01-Library/       - Observation videos from library navigation
                    ├── S01-Day02-Northampton/   - Observation videos from Northampton navigation
                    ├── S01-Day03/               - Observation videos from Day 3 sessions
                    ├── S01-Day03-LibraryIndoors/  - Indoor library navigation observations
                    └── S01-Day10-LibraryHouse/  - Library and house navigation observations

Guide-Dog Trainer Interview

Interviews from Guide-dog trainers are included to provide a comprehensive understanding of the guide dog training process and other guide dog/handler related information.

Guide Dog Handler Interview

We also include semi-structured interview sessions with guide dog handlers to give insights into the human-centric development of future guide dog robots.

Acknowledgements

This dataset was built over several years, and throughout this journey, there are many people to acknowledge.

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all the guide dog handlers who generously shared their invaluable insights about their daily interactions, and to the guide dog trainers who provided detailed knowledge of the training process, evaluation methods, and hands-on guidance during blindfolded walking sessions. As someone who led and participated in all interviews and observations, I deeply value every conversation we had about accessible mobility. The wealth of knowledge we gathered was made possible by our shared commitment to developing mobility assistive robots that promote independent travel.

I would also like to thank my advisor, Prof. Donghyun Kim, for his unwavering support—from collecting data together during observation sessions to providing invaluable guidance throughout this research. I am equally grateful to the co-advisors: Prof. Sunghoon Ivan Lee, Prof. Joydeep Biswas, Prof. Nicholas Giudice, and Prof. Hee-Tae Jung, whose expertise enabled rich data analysis and whose mentorship guided us throughout this journey. The depth of our analysis and the continuation of this work would not have been possible without such a dedicated team.

Finally, I would like to thank Soowan Yang and Jahir Sadik Monon for their meticulous work in post-processing and compiling the data for open-source public release. This dataset truly represents a collaborative effort, and none of this would have been possible without everyone on the team.

— Hochul Hwang

BibTeX

@article{hwang2025guidenav,
      title={GuideNav: User-Informed Development of a Vision-Only Robotic Navigation Assistant For Blind Travelers},
      author={Hwang, Hochul and Yang, Soowan and Monon, Jahir Sadik and Giudice, Nicholas A and Lee, Sunghoon Ivan and Biswas, Joydeep and Kim, Donghyun},
      booktitle={2026 21st ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI)},
      year={2026}
    }