Vision-Based Tactile Paving Detection Method in Navigation Systems for Visually Impaired Persons

In general, a visually impaired person relies on guide canes in order to walk outside besides depending only on a tactile pavement as a warning and directional tool in order to avoid any obstructions or hazardous situations. However, still a lot of training is needed in order to recognize the tactile pattern, and it is quite difficult for persons who have recently become visually impaired. This chapter describes the development and evaluation of vision-based tactile paving detection method for visually impaired persons. Some experiments will be conducted on how it works to detect the tactile pavement and identify the shape of tactile pattern. In this experiment, a vision-based method is proposed by using MATLAB including the Arduino platform and speaker as guidance tools. The output of this system based on the result found from tactile detection in MATLAB then produces auditory output and notifies the visually impaired about the type of tactile detected. Consequently, the development of tactile pavement detection system can be used by visually impaired persons for easy detection and navigation purposes

Tactile paving surfaces at bus stops : The need of homogeneous technical solutions for accessible tourism

Accessible tourism promotes the right of all citizens to visit places and experience tourism. Therefore, universal accessibility must exist within the tourism value chain, where the public transport system is an important element. The research project "Accessibility for All in Tourism" focused on the attributes of inclusive bus stops and considered "Universal Design" and “Age Sensitive Design” approaches. In the built environment, products and spaces must consider the needs of all people to the greatest extent possible. In particular, adequate wayfinders to help people with visual disabilities in terms of orientation and danger alerts. Tactile paving surfaces are one of the fundamental elements of accessibility for people with visual disabilities, ensuring they have an independent life, whether they are residents in their city or tourists in another country. However, when considering these tactile surfaces, the needs of elderly people and individuals with visual disabilities are divergent. This study is intended to present international examples of tactile surfaces used at bus stops, in some cases based on bibliographic research and direct observation. For a better understanding of the constituent elements of tactile surfaces, established examples were compiled. The results indicate that there is a great diversity of technical solutions for tactile surfaces at bus stops that attend to the needs of people with visual disabilities, some more age-friendly than others. In a context of equitable use and accessible tourism, homogeneous technical solutions, inclusive for all, should be implemented in all countries.Peer Reviewe

Accessible path finding for historic urban environments: feature extraction and vectorization from point clouds

Sidewalk inventory is a topic whose importance is increasing together with the widespread use of smart city management. In order to manage the city properly and to make informed decisions, it is necessary to know the real conditions of the city. Furthermore, when planning and calculating cultural routes within the city, these routes must take into account the specific needs of all users. Therefore, it is important to know the conditions of the city’s sidewalk network and also their physical and geometrical characteristics. Typically, sidewalk network are generated basing on existing cartographic data, and sidewalk attributes are gathered through crowdsourcing. In this paper, the sidewalk network of an historic city was produced starting from point cloud data. The point cloud was semantically segmented in ”roads” and ”sidewalks”, and then the cluster of points of sidewalks surfaces were used to compute sidewalk attributes and to generate a vector layer composed of nodes and edges. The vector layer was then used to compute accessible paths between Points of Interest, using QGIS. The tests made on a real case study, the historic city and UNESCO site of Sabbioneta (Italy), shows a vectorization accuracy of 98.7%. In future, the vector layers and the computed paths could be used to generate maps for city planners, and to develop web or mobile phones routing apps.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación | Ref. RYC2020-029193-

Exploring water adsorption on isoelectronically doped graphene using alchemical derivatives

The design and production of novel 2-dimensional materials has seen great progress in the last decade, prompting further exploration of the chemistry of such materials. Doping and hydrogenating graphene is an experimentally realised method of changing its surface chemistry, but there is still a great deal to be understood on how doping impacts on the adsorption of molecules. Developing this understanding is key to unlocking the potential applications of these materials. High throughput screening methods can provide particularly effective ways to explore vast chemical compositions of materials. Here, alchemical derivatives are used as a method to screen the dissociative adsorption energy of water molecules on various BN doped topologies of hydrogenated graphene. The predictions from alchemical derivatives are assessed by comparison to density functional theory. This screening method is found to predict dissociative adsorption energies that span a range of more than 2 eV, with a mean absolute error $<0.1$ eV. In addition, we show that the quality of such predictions can be readily assessed by examination of the Kohn-Sham highest occupied molecular orbital in the initial states. In this way, the root mean square error in the dissociative adsorption energies of water is reduced by almost an order of magnitude (down to $\sim0.02$ eV) after filtering out poor predictions. The findings point the way towards a reliable use of first order alchemical derivatives for efficient screening procedures

Will 5G See its Blind Side? Evolving 5G for Universal Internet Access

Internet has shown itself to be a catalyst for economic growth and social equity but its potency is thwarted by the fact that the Internet is off limits for the vast majority of human beings. Mobile phones---the fastest growing technology in the world that now reaches around 80\% of humanity---can enable universal Internet access if it can resolve coverage problems that have historically plagued previous cellular architectures (2G, 3G, and 4G). These conventional architectures have not been able to sustain universal service provisioning since these architectures depend on having enough users per cell for their economic viability and thus are not well suited to rural areas (which are by definition sparsely populated). The new generation of mobile cellular technology (5G), currently in a formative phase and expected to be finalized around 2020, is aimed at orders of magnitude performance enhancement. 5G offers a clean slate to network designers and can be molded into an architecture also amenable to universal Internet provisioning. Keeping in mind the great social benefits of democratizing Internet and connectivity, we believe that the time is ripe for emphasizing universal Internet provisioning as an important goal on the 5G research agenda. In this paper, we investigate the opportunities and challenges in utilizing 5G for global access to the Internet for all (GAIA). We have also identified the major technical issues involved in a 5G-based GAIA solution and have set up a future research agenda by defining open research problems

Exploring the 15-minute neighbourhoods. An evaluation based on the walkability performance to public facilities

Recent trends in urban policies are rediscovering a new focus on different urban life models that exclude the obsolete vehicle model and lead to renewed attention on the proximity dimension and active mobility. This vision takes concrete form in the concept of the 15-minute city model, focused on pedestrian accessibility from one’s home to nearby urban services and spaces. In this perspective, the paper aims at exploring the theme of 15-minute cities through a GIS-based model to evaluate pedestrian accessibility to neighbourhood facilities. The implemented methodology integrates the assessment of walking distances, considering the time factor as crucial, and mapping the resident population. The method is then applied to measure the current performances of an existing neighbourhood in Parma from the 15 minutes city perspective, assessing accessibility based on home-facility travel times and the resident population distribution within reach. A reflection is proposed on what has been learned and on the possible contribution that the method can bring to monitoring the 15-minute city and to urban planning

Exterior accessibility issues: a study of the outdoor spaces connected with housing facilities at Louisiana State University

This document investigates Louisiana State University’s progress in becoming a fully accessible campus, specifically in regard to student housing and the surrounding amenities such as laundry facilities, dining facilities and recreational areas. The benchmarks used for determining this include the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Universal Design Handbook and surveys of other campuses that have made greater strides in this area. This document seeks to determine the extent to which Louisiana State University has become accessible for wheelchair users and bring to light examples of areas of difficulty in the housing cluster area. Equally important in this document are issues of aesthetics and the consideration of the psychological ramifications of mandated architectural components such as ramps and curb cuts being placed in out of the way areas, thereby creating a hierarchical disadvantage for physically impaired users of the campus and lessening the quality of the overall experience. The overarching intention of this document is to provide a framework for improving accessibility in order to bring the entire university community together in fully accessible spaces