Guide dogs can be incredibly helpful, letting blind people maintain a level of independence that would be difficult without their loyalty. However, guide dogs require a huge amount of training and, because they’re dogs, are not practical for every blind person. Now, a student at Loughborough University in England has designed a concept handheld device that can do some of the tasks of a guide dog.

The electronic tool is called Theia and it features gyroscope-based technology to pull the user in the correct direction. This is similar to how many virtual reality controllers work, but the direction of the pull would be decided using a mapping system that takes into consideration the ease and safety of a given path and other matters important to blind people.