Wearable Urban Mobility Assistive Device for Visually Impaired Pedestrians Using a Smartphone and a Tactile-Foot Interface

This paper reports on the progress of a wearable assistive technology (AT) device designed to enhance the independent, safe, and efficient mobility of blind and visually impaired pedestrians in outdoor environments. Such device exploits the smartphone’s positioning and computing capabilities to locate and guide users along urban settings. The necessary navigation instructions to reach a destination are encoded as vibrating patterns which are conveyed to the user via a foot-placed tactile interface. To determine the performance of the proposed AT device, two user experiments were conducted. The first one requested a group of 20 voluntary normally sighted subjects to recognize the feedback provided by the tactile-foot interface. The results showed recognition rates over 93%. The second experiment involved two blind voluntary subjects which were assisted to find target destinations along public urban pathways. Results show that the subjects successfully accomplished the task and suggest that blind and visually impaired pedes-trians might find the AT device and its concept approach useful, friendly, fast to master, and easy to use

Élaborer une approche d'assistance à la navigation à inspiration cognitive pour les personnes souffrant d'une incapacité visuelle majeuret : cas du piéton non voyant

Les personnes non voyantes font face à des défis quotidiens au cours de leurs activités de navigation. Afin d’offrir des solutions technologiques pour les aider à surmonter ces défis, il est nécessaire d’élaborer une méthodologie de recherche appropriée qui prend en considération leurs besoins spécifiques. Cette méthodologie nécessite des connaissances multidisciplinaires et une capacité de travailler avec des équipes provenant de différents domaines. Nous entamons cette thèse par un aperçu sur les différentes approches de conception adoptées en ingénierie et en réadaptation. Nous exposerons les principes de l’approche classique d’ingénierie, puis du design participatif, ensuite du design universel et enfin notre nouvelle approche de conception que nous nommons ‘le design cognitif’. Nous mettons en évidence le potentiel de cette nouvelle approche pour fournir des solutions qui répondent aux attentes et aux besoins des personnes non voyantes. Cette approche sert à améliorer la conscience situationnelle chez ces individus pendant leurs activités de navigation dans des zones urbaines. Dans un premier temps, nous avons étudié la nature de la représentation mentale de l’espace chez les personnes non voyantes. Après cela, nous avons modélisé la configuration de cette représentation mentale en nous basant sur les schémas d’image. Ces schémas permettent de capturer de manière claire et significative les différentes relations qui existent entre les éléments de la représentation mentale. Ensuite, nous avons élaboré un modèle conceptuel sémantique de données spatiales utiles pour aider les individus non voyants dans leurs différentes tâches de navigation et de wayfinding. Ces données doivent être structurées de façon hiérarchique afin de garantir une meilleure communication entre l’outil d’assistance et l’utilisateur non voyant. Enfin, nous avons intégré ce modèle sémantique avec la norme ISO 19133:2005 développée pour soutenir les services de suivi et de navigation des clients mobiles. Nous avons aussi utilisé un scénario type de navigation qui illustre l’apport et la contribution du design cognitif pour concevoir des outils d’assistance pour les personnes non voyantes.Blind people encounter many challenges during their daily activities of navigation. In order to develop technological solutions to assist them, it is necessary to elaborate an appropriate research methodology that take into account the specific needs of people suffering from such a disability. This methodology requires multidisciplinary knowledge and the ability to work with teams with widely different backgrounds. First of all, we propose an overview of different approaches of design adopted in rehabilitation and engineering, beginning with the classical engineering approach, then progressing to participatory design, universal design and a novel approach of design that we call ‘cognitive design’. Then, we highlight the potential of this latter approach in providing solutions that meet the expectations and the needs of disabled people. This approach helps to provide blind people with heightened situation awareness during their navigational activities within urban areas. At the beginning, we investigated the nature of the mental representation of space used by blind persons. We then represented this information using image schemata as these capture in a meaningful way the different features that make up the spatial configuration. Next, we elaborated a semantic model of useful geospatial data which will serve to assist the visually impaired in various tasks of navigation and wayfinding. These data must be hierarchically structured in order to guarantee a better communication between the device and blind users. After that, we integrated this semantic model with basic geographic information useful for tracking and navigation activities, using the ISO 19133:2005 data standard developed for Location-based Services. A typical scenario is used to show the contribution and value of adopting the cognitive design approach to develop an assistive tool for blind pedestrians

Integrating Haptic Feedback into Mobile Location Based Services

Haptics is a feedback technology that takes advantage of the human sense of touch by applying forces, vibrations, and/or motions to a haptic-enabled device such as a mobile phone. Historically, human-computer interaction has been visual - text and images on the screen. Haptic feedback can be an important additional method especially in Mobile Location Based Services such as knowledge discovery, pedestrian navigation and notification systems. A knowledge discovery system called the Haptic GeoWand is a low interaction system that allows users to query geo-tagged data around them by using a point-and-scan technique with their mobile device. Haptic Pedestrian is a navigation system for walkers. Four prototypes have been developed classified according to the user’s guidance requirements, the user type (based on spatial skills), and overall system complexity. Haptic Transit is a notification system that provides spatial information to the users of public transport. In all these systems, haptic feedback is used to convey information about location, orientation, density and distance by use of the vibration alarm with varying frequencies and patterns to help understand the physical environment. Trials elicited positive responses from the users who see benefit in being provided with a “heads up” approach to mobile navigation. Results from a memory recall test show that the users of haptic feedback for navigation had better memory recall of the region traversed than the users of landmark images. Haptics integrated into a multi-modal navigation system provides more usable, less distracting but more effective interaction than conventional systems. Enhancements to the current work could include integration of contextual information, detailed large-scale user trials and the exploration of using haptics within confined indoor spaces

Transforming our World through Universal Design for Human Development

An environment, or any building product or service in it, should ideally be designed to meet the needs of all those who wish to use it. Universal Design is the design and composition of environments, products, and services so that they can be accessed, understood and used to the greatest extent possible by all people, regardless of their age, size, ability or disability. It creates products, services and environments that meet people’s needs. In short, Universal Design is good design. This book presents the proceedings of UD2022, the 6th International Conference on Universal Design, held from 7 - 9 September 2022 in Brescia, Italy.The conference is targeted at professionals and academics interested in the theme of universal design as related to the built environment and the wellbeing of users, but also covers mobility and urban environments, knowledge, and information transfer, bringing together research knowledge and best practice from all over the world. The book contains 72 papers from 13 countries, grouped into 8 sections and covering topics including the design of inclusive natural environments and urban spaces, communities, neighborhoods and cities; housing; healthcare; mobility and transport systems; and universally- designed learning environments, work places, cultural and recreational spaces. One section is devoted to universal design and cultural heritage, which had a particular focus at this edition of the conference. The book reflects the professional and disciplinary diversity represented in the UD movement, and will be of interest to all those whose work involves inclusive design

Human experience in the natural and built environment : implications for research policy and practice

22nd IAPS conference. Edited book of abstracts. 427 pp. University of Strathclyde, Sheffield and West of Scotland Publication. ISBN: 978-0-94-764988-3

Creating City Cyclists: Understanding Why People Start, and Sometimes Stop, Cycling in South London

Cycling can be framed as a means of practically re-ordering movement, connection and experience. Drawing upon readings in mobility and urban studies, the thesis addresses deficiencies in practice theory by investigating how to better conceptualise dynamic change, socio-technical multiplicity, and embodied experiences of technology. Investigating people’s experiences of using bicycles to live in a city, it asks how the take up, alteration and divestment of different practices might influence how urban times and spaces are practically ordered. The study develops disciplinary debates on place and practice by engaging with the theoretical concepts of emergence, encounter and cosmogony. It empirically investigates three sub-questions: how are cycling-journeys experienced in London; how do experiences of cycling the city alter urban practice; and how does cycling influence the practical remaking of urban place? Methodologically, 20 participants were recruited for a year’s fieldwork comprised of 3 methods; ride-along with videoelicitation, diary-interview and focus groups. This iteratively investigated three practices; civility, navigation and placemaking. Understanding the urban as a means and outcome of systematised contingent ordering - a machinic complex -the study suggests that cycling reconfigures how such ordering occurs. Rather than investigating practices of cycling it investigates how urban practices incorporate experiences of cycling and might bedisseminated, intensified, disrupted, or reconfigured. By decentring cycling and fracturing the study’s focal point, the framework facilitates a conceptualisation of urban practices as traversing an array of contingent situations, via a variety of technologically-mediated engagements. The findings explore how quotidian mobility creates durable social forms and places through transient, mounted but systematised and repeated meetings in the street. This refines our understanding of the spatial and performative. It argues that creative repairs making modest alterations to elements of skill, meaning and infrastructure might catalyse more radical systemic reconfigurations of their links, or initiate self-perpetuating trajectories of further change