Editor's Note: At Google Research, we're interested in exploring how technology can help improve people's daily lives and experiences. So it's been an incredible opportunity to work with Thomas Panek, avid runner and President & CEO of Guiding Eyes for the Blind, to apply computer vision for something important in his everyday life: independent exercise. Project Guideline is an early-stage research project that leverages on-device machine learning to allow Thomas to use a phone, headphones and a guideline painted on the ground to run independently. Below, Thomas shares why he collaborated with us on this research project, and what the journey has been like for him. I've always loved to run.

Google is testing a new app that will allow blind people to run on their own without a guide dog or human assistant. Project Guideline uses a phone's camera to track a guideline on a course and then sends audio cues to the user via bone-conducting headphones. If the runner strays too far from the center, the sound will get louder on whichever side they're favoring. Still in the prototype phase, Project Guideline was developed at a Google hackathon last year when a blind runner asked developers to design a program that would allow him to jog independently. The app uses a phone's camera to track a painted line and then sends audio cues via bone-conducting headphones if a runner strays too far to the left or right Thomas Panek, CEO of Guiding Eyes for the Blind, began losing his vision when he was just 8 years old and was legally blind by the time he was a teenager.

In collaboration with nonprofit organization Guiding Eyes for the Blind, Google today piloted an AI system called Project Guideline, designed to help blind and low-vision people run races independently with just a smartphone. Using an app that tracked the virtual race via GPS and a Google-designed harness that delivered audio prompts to indicate the location of a prepainted line, Guiding Eyes for the Blind CEO Thomas Panek attempted to run New York Road Runners' Virtual Run for Thanks 5K in Central Park. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2015, a total of 1.02 million people in the U.S. were blind and approximately 3.22 million people had vision impairment. Technologies exist to help blind and low-vision people navigate challenging everyday environments, but those who wish to run must either rely on a guide animal or a human guide who's tethered to them. Google's Guideline app works without an internet connection and requires only a guideline painted on a pedestrian path.

Check out "AI: A Force for Good" at the Artificial Intelligence Conference in New York City, April 29-May 2, 2018. What do artificial intelligence (AI), invention, and social good have in common? While on the surface they serve very different purposes, at their core, they all require you to do one thing in order to be successful at them: think differently. Take the act of inventing--in order to develop a great patent, trade secret, or other intellectual property, you need to think outside of the box. Similarly, at the heart of AI is the act of unlocking new capabilities, whether that's making virtual personal assistants like Alexa more useful, or creating a chatbot that provides a personalized experience to customers.

Guide dogs help to provide people with vision loss with independence, safety, and, perhaps equally important – companionship. I volunteer as a puppy raiser for Guiding Eyes for the Blind because I saw first-hand how my late husband's vision loss affected him during his battle with cancer. I want to help make lives better for people who are blind or have impaired vision. IBM's Lorraine Trapani holds TJ. (Photo: Darryl J Bautista/Feature Photo Service) Guiding Eyes for the Blind is a non-profit organization dedicated to the breeding, raising, training and placement of guide dogs with people who are blind or visually impaired. Guiding Eyes is using Watson to help pair more guide dogs with those who need them. The stakes are high: each dog costs Guiding Eyes approximately $50,000 to train over two years, and only half of the dogs raised and trained will graduate as guide dogs or be chosen as dogs to breed.

If there are two things that seem to be polar opposites, it's the warm exuberance of puppies and the cold intelligence of a supercomputer like IBM's Watson. At Guiding Eyes for the Blind in Yorktown Heights, New York, need has brought the two together -- to help determine which puppies are good candidates to serve the blind. "The incidence of blindness is increasing at an incredibly and somewhat alarming rate," said Thomas Panek, CEO of the guide dog organization. Panek lost his sight in his 20s. "Only about 36 percent of the dogs make it" as a guide dog, he said.