Running guide agent: A step towards running unbounded

For blind and low-vision (BLV) athletes, running has traditionally required a physical tether — whether it’s a human guide or a painted track line. Today, we are excited to share how we’re taking steps towards changing that with the Running Guide agent, an accessibility agent that uses real-time environmental understanding to help low-vision athletes run. It marks a massive leap from simple path-following to advanced, real-time spatial reasoning. As we work to perfect this technology, our goal is simple: unassisted independence for every runner.

A hybrid architecture for uncompromising safety

Building on our previous work with Project Guideline, the Running Guide agent uses a chest-mounted Pixel 10 Pro smartphone to view the path ahead and guide the user via auditory feedback. Because high-speed activities demand high trust, we built a hybrid, dual-path architecture:

• On-device segmentation: Running entirely offline on the Pixel 10’s custom silicon, this model guarantees ultra-low latency safety. It delivers immediate “STOP” alerts and steering cues — heard as directional ticking sounds — so runners maintain a reliable sense of direction even without a cellular connection.
• Gemma 4’s advanced reasoning: Leveraging Gemma 4 E4B, this path handles complex multimodal inputs (image and text) for high-level scene understanding entirely on device. To keep latency low, we use Smarter Frame Selection. Instead of processing every frame, the model only analyzes “high-entropy” frames — like sudden terrain changes or new obstacles — delivering faster, highly relevant coaching.

A multi-agent framework

The Running Guide agent is a collaborative, multi-agent framework designed to help enable the running experience for a BLV user:

• Planner agent: Utilizing Gemma 4’s function calling, this agent pulls weather and Google Maps data, chats with the runner to establish workout goals and calibrates their digital starting line.
• Coach agent: Operates mid-run to deliver concise, telegraphic verbal alerts. It triages feedback into a strict hierarchy: DANGER (immediate evasive action needed), WARNING (nearby runners/obstacles) and NOTICE (upcoming track curves).
• Break agent: Manages rest intervals, allowing athletes to pause and resume their session at any time.

Intelligent eyewear and community partnerships

While the chest-mounted Pixel 10 Pro is a robust foundation, we are prototyping the Running Guide agent on intelligent eyewear. Wearable glasses provide a wider, steadier field of view, which drastically optimizes the data fed to our multimodal models. The glasses stream directly to the Pixel device, seamlessly blending hardware and ambient AI.