Enhanced Accessibility for People with Disabilities Living in Urban Areas

[Excerpt] People with disabilities constitute a significant proportion of the poor in developing countries. If internationally agreed targets on reducing poverty are to be reached, it is critical that specific measures be taken to reduce the societal discrimination and isolation that people with disabilities continue to face. Transport is an important enabler of strategies to fight poverty through enhancing access to education, employment, and social services. This project aims to further the understanding of the mobility and access issues experienced by people with disabilities in developing countries, and to identify specific steps that can be taken to start addressing problems. A major objective of the project is to compile a compendium of guidelines that can be used by government authorities, advocacy groups, and donor/loan agencies to improve the access of people with disabilities to transport and other services in urban areas

Suggested approach for establishing a rehabilitation engineering information service for the state of California

An ever expanding body of rehabilitation engineering technology is developing in this country, but it rarely reaches the people for whom it is intended. The increasing concern of state and federal departments of rehabilitation for this technology lag was the stimulus for a series of problem-solving workshops held in California during 1977. As a result of the workshops, the recommendation emerged that the California Department of Rehabilitation take the lead in the development of a coordinated delivery system that would eventually serve the entire state and be a model for similar systems across the nation

A short curriculum of the robotics and technology of computer lab

Our research Lab is directed by Prof. Anton Civit. It is an interdisciplinary group of 23 researchers that carry out their teaching and researching labor at the Escuela Politécnica Superior (Higher Polytechnic School) and the Escuela de Ingeniería Informática (Computer Engineering School). The main research fields are: a) Industrial and mobile Robotics, b) Neuro-inspired processing using electronic spikes, c) Embedded and real-time systems, d) Parallel and massive processing computer architecture, d) Information Technologies for rehabilitation, handicapped and elder people, e) Web accessibility and usability In this paper, the Lab history is presented and its main publications and research projects over the last few years are summarized.Nuestro grupo de investigación está liderado por el profesor Civit. Somos un grupo multidisciplinar de 23 investigadores que realizan su labor docente e investigadora en la Escuela Politécnica Superior y en Escuela de Ingeniería Informática. Las principales líneas de investigaciones son: a) Robótica industrial y móvil. b) Procesamiento neuro-inspirado basado en pulsos electrónicos. c) Sistemas empotrados y de tiempo real. d) Arquitecturas paralelas y de procesamiento masivo. e) Tecnología de la información aplicada a la discapacidad, rehabilitación y a las personas mayores. f) Usabilidad y accesibilidad Web. En este artículo se reseña la historia del grupo y se resumen las principales publicaciones y proyectos que ha conseguido en los últimos años

Learning from demonstration for locally assistive mobility aids

© 2019, The Author(s). Active assistive systems for mobility aids are largely restricted to environments mapped a-priori, while passive assistance primarily provides collision mitigation and other hand-crafted behaviors in the platform’s immediate space. This paper presents a framework providing active short-term assistance, combining the freedom of location independence with the intelligence of active assistance. Demonstration data consisting of on-board sensor data and driving inputs is gathered from an able-bodied expert maneuvring the mobility aid around a generic interior setting, and used in constructing a probabilistic intention model built with Radial Basis Function Networks. This allows for short-term intention prediction relying only upon immediately available user input and on-board sensor data, to be coupled with real-time path generation based upon the same expert demonstration data via Dynamic Policy Programming, a stochastic optimal control method. Together these two elements provide a combined assistive mobility system, capable of operating in restrictive environments without the need for additional obstacle avoidance protocols. Experimental results in both simulation and on the University of Technology Sydney semi-autonomous wheelchair in settings not seen in training data show promise in assisting users of power mobility aids

Runtime Safety Assurance of Autonomous Vehicles used for Last-mile Delivery in Urban Environments

Last-mile delivery of goods has gained a lot of attraction during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, current package delivery processes often lead to parking in the second lane, which in turn has negative effects on the urban environment in which the deliveries take place, i.e., traffic congestion and safety issues for other road users. To tackle these challenges, an effective autonomous delivery system is required that guarantees efficient, flexible and safe delivery of goods. The project LogiSmile, co-funded by EIT Urban Mobility, pilots an autonomous delivery vehicle dubbed the Autonomous Hub Vehicle (AHV) that works in cooperation with a small autonomous robot called the Autonomous Delivery Device (ADD). With the two cooperating robots, the project LogiSmile aims to find a possible solution to the challenges of urban goods distribution in congested areas and to demonstrate the future of urban mobility. As a member of Nieders\"achsische Forschungszentrum f\"ur Fahrzeugtechnik (NFF), the Institute for Software and Systems Engineering (ISSE) developed an integrated software safety architecture for runtime monitoring of the AHV, with (1) a dependability cage (DC) used for the on-board monitoring of the AHV, and (2) a remote command control center (CCC) which enables the remote off-board supervision of a fleet of AHVs. The DC supervises the vehicle continuously and in case of any safety violation, it switches the nominal driving mode to degraded driving mode or fail-safe mode. Additionally, the CCC also manages the communication of the AHV with the ADD and provides fail-operational solutions for the AHV when it cannot handle complex situations autonomously. The runtime monitoring concept developed for the AHV has been demonstrated in 2022 in Hamburg. We report on the obtained results and on the lessons learned.Comment: 11 page

Telemedicine and primary health: The virtual doctor project Zambia

This paper is a commentary on a project application of telemedicine to alleviate primary health care problems in Lundazi district in the Eastern province of Zambia. The project dubbed 'The Virtual Doctor Project' will use hard body vehicles fitted with satellite communication devices and modern medical equipment to deliver primary health care services to some of the neediest areas of the country. The relevance and importance of the project lies in the fact that these areas are hard-to-reach due to rugged natural terrain and have very limited telecommunications infrastructure. The lack of these and other basic services makes it difficult for medical personnel to settle in these areas, which leads to an acute shortage of medical personnel. The paper presents this problem and how it is addressed by 'The Virtual Doctor Project', emphasizing that while the telemedicine concept is not new in sub-Saharan Africa, the combination of mobility and connectivity to service a number of villages 'on the go' is an important variation in the shift back to the 1978 Alma Ata principles of the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO). This overview of the Virtual Doctor Project in Zambia provides insight into both the potential for ICT, and the problems and limitations that any 'real-world' articulation of this technology must confront.Telemedicine, Satellite, Primary health, Alma Ata

Runtime safety assurance of autonomous vehicles used for last-mile delivery in urban environments

Last-mile delivery of goods has gained a lot of attraction during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, current package delivery processes often lead to parking in the second lane, which in turn has negative effects on the urban environment in which the deliveries take place, i.e., traffic congestion and safety issues for other road users. To tackle these challenges, an effective autonomous delivery system is required that guarantees efficient, flexible and safe delivery of goods. The project LogiSmile, co-funded by EIT Urban Mobility, pilots an autonomous delivery vehicle dubbed the Autonomous Hub Vehicle (AHV) that works in cooperation with a small autonomous robot called the Autonomous Delivery Device (ADD). With the two cooperating robots, the project LogiSmile aims to find a possible solution to the challenges of urban goods distribution in congested areas and to demonstrate the future of urban mobility. As a member of Niedersächsische Forschungszentrum für Fahrzeugtechnik (NFF), the Institute for Software and Systems Engineering (ISSE) developed an integrated software safety architecture for runtime monitoring of the AHV, with (1) a dependability cage (DC) used for the on-board monitoring of the AHV, and (2) a remote command control center (CCC) which enables the remote off-board supervision of a fleet of AHVs. The DC supervises the vehicle continuously and in case of any safety violation, it switches the nominal driving mode to degraded driving mode or fail-safe mode. Additionally, the CCC also manages the communication of the AHV with the ADD and provides fail-operational solutions for the AHV when it cannot handle complex situations autonomously. The runtime monitoring concept developed for the AHV has been demonstrated in 2022 in Hamburg. We report on the obtained results and on the lessons learned

Inventory of ATT system requirements for elderly and disabled drivers and travellers

This Inventory of ATT System Requirements for Elderly and Disabled Drivers and Travellers is the product of the TELSCAN project’s Workpackage 3: Identification and Updating of User Requirements of Elderly and Disabled Travellers. It describes the methods and tools used to identify the needs of elderly and disabled (E&D) travellers. The result of this investigation is a summary of the requirements of elderly and disabled travellers using different modes of transport, including private cars, buses/trams, metros/trains, ships and airplanes. It provides a generic user requirements specification which can guide the design of all transport telematics systems. However, it is important to stress that projects should also capture a more detailed definition of user requirements for their specific application area or system