709 research outputs found

    Wayfinding and Navigation for People with Disabilities Using Social Navigation Networks

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    To achieve safe and independent mobility, people usually depend on published information, prior experience, the knowledge of others, and/or technology to navigate unfamiliar outdoor and indoor environments. Today, due to advances in various technologies, wayfinding and navigation systems and services are commonplace and are accessible on desktop, laptop, and mobile devices. However, despite their popularity and widespread use, current wayfinding and navigation solutions often fail to address the needs of people with disabilities (PWDs). We argue that these shortcomings are primarily due to the ubiquity of the compute-centric approach adopted in these systems and services, where they do not benefit from the experience-centric approach. We propose that following a hybrid approach of combining experience-centric and compute-centric methods will overcome the shortcomings of current wayfinding and navigation solutions for PWDs

    Wayfinding and Navigation for People with Disabilities Using Social Navigation Networks

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    Ergonomic standards for pedestrian areas for disabled people: literature review and consultations

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    As part of the project for the Transport and Road Research Laboratory concerned with the development of design guidance for pedestrian areas and footways to satisfy the needs of disabled and elderly people, a thorough examination of the literature was required. In addition the literature search was to be complemented by a wide-ranging series of discussions with local authorities, organisations representing the interests of elderly and disabled people, and other interested agencies. This Working Paper sets out the findings of this exercise. The objective of the literature review and the consultations was to identify the key impediments for elderly and disabled people when using pedestrian areas and footways. The current guidelines and standards relating to footways, pedestrianised areas and access to buildings were to be identified and their adequacy commented upon, as were the conflicts such recommendations raise between various groups of disabled people and with able-bodied people. The consultations were intended to provide greater insights into what the literature highlighted, and to suggest possible solutions. The literature review produced over 400 key references and a list of 35 impediments. A more detailed examination of the literature and the consultations reduced this list to six key impediments namely: parking; public transport waiting areas; movement distances; surface conditions; ramps, and information provision. The type and scale of problem created by the above impediments for various groups of disabled and elderly people are discussed, together with their measurement and assessment. The type and adequacy of existing design standards and guidance relating to these impediments are also outlined

    3D Perception Based Lifelong Navigation of Service Robots in Dynamic Environments

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    Lifelong navigation of mobile robots is to ability to reliably operate over extended periods of time in dynamically changing environments. Historically, computational capacity and sensor capability have been the constraining factors to the richness of the internal representation of the environment that a mobile robot could use for navigation tasks. With affordable contemporary sensing technology available that provides rich 3D information of the environment and increased computational power, we can increasingly make use of more semantic environmental information in navigation related tasks.A navigation system has many subsystems that must operate in real time competing for computation resources in such as the perception, localization, and path planning systems. The main thesis proposed in this work is that we can utilize 3D information from the environment in our systems to increase navigational robustness without making trade-offs in any of the real time subsystems. To support these claims, this dissertation presents robust, real world 3D perception based navigation systems in the domains of indoor doorway detection and traversal, sidewalk-level outdoor navigation in urban environments, and global localization in large scale indoor warehouse environments.The discussion of these systems includes methods of 3D point cloud based object detection to find respective objects of semantic interest for the given navigation tasks as well as the use of 3D information in the navigational systems for purposes such as localization and dynamic obstacle avoidance. Experimental results for each of these applications demonstrate the effectiveness of the techniques for robust long term autonomous operation

    A non-holonomic, highly human-in-the-loop compatible, assistive mobile robotic platform guidance navigation and control strategy

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    The provision of assistive mobile robotics for empowering and providing independence to the infirm, disabled and elderly in society has been the subject of much research. The issue of providing navigation and control assistance to users, enabling them to drive their powered wheelchairs effectively, can be complex and wide-ranging; some users fatigue quickly and can find that they are unable to operate the controls safely, others may have brain injury re-sulting in periodic hand tremors, quadriplegics may use a straw-like switch in their mouth to provide a digital control signal. Advances in autonomous robotics have led to the development of smart wheelchair systems which have attempted to address these issues; however the autonomous approach has, ac-cording to research, not been successful; users reporting that they want to be active drivers and not passengers. Recent methodologies have been to use collaborative or shared control which aims to predict or anticipate the need for the system to take over control when some pre-decided threshold has been met, yet these approaches still take away control from the us-er. This removal of human supervision and control by an autonomous system makes the re-sponsibility for accidents seriously problematic. This thesis introduces a new human-in-the-loop control structure with real-time assistive lev-els. One of these levels offers improved dynamic modelling and three of these levels offer unique and novel real-time solutions for: collision avoidance, localisation and waypoint iden-tification, and assistive trajectory generation. This architecture and these assistive functions always allow the user to remain fully in control of any motion of the powered wheelchair, shown in a series of experiments

    A qualitative enquiry into OpenStreetMap making

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    Based on a case study on the OpenStreetMap community, this paper provides a contextual and embodied understanding of the user-led, user-participatory and user-generated produsage phenomenon. It employs Grounded Theory, Social Worlds Theory, and qualitative methods to illuminate and explores the produsage processes of OpenStreetMap making, and how knowledge artefacts such as maps can be collectively and collaboratively produced by a community of people, who are situated in different places around the world but engaged with the same repertoire of mapping practices. The empirical data illustrate that OpenStreetMap itself acts as a boundary object that enables actors from different social worlds to co-produce the Map through interacting with each other and negotiating the meanings of mapping, the mapping data and the Map itself. The discourses also show that unlike traditional maps that black-box cartographic knowledge and offer a single dominant perspective of cities or places, OpenStreetMap is an embodied epistemic object that embraces different world views. The paper also explores how contributors build their identities as an OpenStreetMaper alongside some other identities they have. Understanding the identity-building process helps to understand mapping as an embodied activity with emotional, cognitive and social repertoires

    Pathways to non-complex assistive technology for HACC clients in WA : full report

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    The project aims to identify, evaluate and make recommendations to improve the pathways by which West Australian (WA) Home and Community Care (HACC) clients access daily living equipment. Otherwise known as assistive technology (AT), these devices are largely non-complex and often low cost. Funded by HACC and conducted within the context of the WA Assessment Framework (WAAF), the project seeks to answer the following question:&nbsp; &nbsp; How can aids and equipment be most effectively assessed, accessed, funded and used?The research is designed to inform WA state government policy and Commonwealth HACC government policy in relation to the funding of HACC client access to assistive technology. Whilst set in WA, the topic and findings have relevance to HACC in other Australian states and territories, as well as other aspects of aged care policy, other sectors such as disability, and other areas of inquiry such as competency standards and consumer self-direction.</div
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