One day I received a phone call from a professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology. His class had been given an assignment–to develop a robotic guide dog. He was calling to find out what this would entail. I knew he was ahead of himself. He imagined that a guide dog is just an obstacle avoidance pulling mechanism. So I told him the story about the bird trainer who also thought he could guide blind people with birds attached to strings. (I swear it’s true!) This bird trainer demonstrated to a group of guide dog trainers that a bird would fly, attached to a string, and avoid a tower of bricks in the middle of a warehouse. “That’s pretty good,” said the guide dog trainers, as they left.
So I told the engineer in Rochester that guide dogs stop for curbs. Stairs. Both up and down.
“Yes,” he said, “I think a robot can do that.”
“They also take into account low overhanging objects, branches, awnings and the like and guide their blind partners around these things.”
“Okay,” he said.
“When a blind person commands the dog to cross the street it will refuse to go if it’s not really safe,” I said.
“Oh,” he said. “Oh.”
Planet of the Blind 
Plus, they are made up of fluffy, furry, slobbery, kissy, lovey, barky, sometimes smelly stuff. Can’t beat smelly stuff.
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