As a general rule, blind people cannot shop independently. This means that when a blind person needs to buy something in a store, they need to ask for help to a relative, a friend, another customer, or a store staff member. Loss of independence translates into loss of privacy, as reported by Kulyukin et al. Passini and Proulx place retail stores as the most challenging environment for the blind. To provide an independent shopping experience for blind customers two steps are necessary:

• To guide the customer to the exact location of the shelf within the store (known in the literature as ‘locomotor’ guiding, see Ungar).
• To guide the customer to the exact location of the product in the shelf (known in the literature as ‘haptic’ guiding, see Ungar).

The goal of the project is to organize and run a test pilot in a real store combining two existing technologies: humanoid robots and RFID-based smart shelves, for locomotor and haptic guiding respectively. The pilot will demonstrate the possibility of guiding a blind customer from the entrance of the store to the exact location of a product on a shelf, without the help of any other person, thus preserving his or her privacy.