  Cane-type robots have been utilized to assist and supervise the
mobility-impaired population. One essential technique for cane-type robots is
human following control, which allows the robot to follow the user. However,
the limited perceptible information of humans by sensors at close range,
combined with the occlusion caused by lower limb swing during normal walking,
affect the localization of users. These limitations make it difficult to
achieve human following at close range.To address these challenges, this study
developed a new cane-type wheeled robot and proposed a novel human-following
control with multi-camera fusion. This control system mainly consists of two
parts: 1) a human following controller that locates a user by multi-camera
fusion and generates control signals to follow the user. 2) a cane robot
controller designed to steer the cane robot to a target position. The proposed
strategy's effectiveness has been validated in outdoor experiments with six
healthy subjects. The experimental scenarios included different terrains (i.e.,
straight, turning, and inclined paths), road conditions (i.e., flat and rough
roads), and walking speeds. The obtained results showed that the average
tracking error for position and orientation was less than 5 cm and 15{\deg}
respectively across all scenarios. Moreover, the cane robot can effectively
adapt to a wide range of individual gait patterns and achieve stable human
following at daily walking speeds (0.75 m/s - 1.45 m/s).
