Pedestrian network map generation approaches and recommendation

With the advanced capabilities of mobile devices and the success of car navigation systems, interest in pedestrian navigation systems is on the rise. A critical component of any navigation system is a map database, which represents a network (e.g., road networks for car navigation) and supports key functionality such as map display, geocoding, and routing. Road networks, mainly due to the popularity of car navigation systems, are well defined and publicly available. However, in pedestrian navigation systems, as well as other applications including urban planning and physical activity studies, road networks do not adequately represent the paths that pedestrians usually travel. Currently, there is a void in literatures discussing the challenges, methods, and best practices for pedestrian network map generation. This coupled with the increased demand for pedestrian networks is the prime motivation for development of new approaches and algorithms to automatically generating pedestrian networks. Three approaches, network buffering, using existing road networks, collaborative mapping, using Global Positioning System (GPS) traces collected by volunteers, and image processing, using high-resolution satellite and laser imageries, were implemented and evaluated with a pedestrian network baseline as a ground truth. The results of the experiments indicate that these three approaches, while differing in complexity and outcome, are viable for automatic pedestrian network map generation. The recommendation of a suitable approach for generating pedestrian networks for a given set of sources and requirements is provided. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC

A pedestrian network construction algorithm based on multiple GPS traces

Currently, pedestrian networks are not as widely available as road networks are for many areas; this is partly due to the high demand for applications such as car navigation. However, this situation is rapidly changing as GPS-enabled mobile devices are increasingly becoming commonplace for pedestrian applications and as they are potential for volunteered data collection. For this reason, the development of efficient and cost-effective techniques appropriate for collecting and constructing pedestrian network databases is needed. This paper presents an algorithm for automatically identifying geometries of pedestrian path segments and constructing a pedestrian network from multiple GPS traces. The algorithm was experimented by using two sets of data sources, self-collected walking traces and OpenStreetMap (OSM) walking traces. The experiment with self-collected data was validated by comparing the constructed pedestrian network with a network baseline and calculating the quality measurements in three environment settings. The experiment with OSM traces was validated by visually inspecting maps overlaid on high-resolution images. Evaluation results show that the algorithm can automatically construct pedestrian networks. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd

Design considerations for a personalized wheelchair navigation system

Individuals with mobility impairments such as wheelchair users are often at a disadvantage when traveling to a new place, as their mobility can be easily affected by environmental barriers, and as such, even short trips can be difficult and perhaps impossible. We envision a personalized wheelchair navigation system based on a PDA equipped with wireless Internet access and GPS that can provide adaptive navigation support to wheelchair users in any geographic environment. Requirements, architectures and components of such a system are described in this paper. © 2007 IEEE

Pedestrian network extraction from fused aerial imagery (orthoimages) and laser imagery (Lidar)

A pedestrian network is a topological map that contains the geometric relationship between pedestrian path segments (e.g., sidewalk, crosswalk, footpath), which is needed in a variety of applications, such as pedestrian navigation services. However, current pedestrian networks are not widely available. In an effort to provide an automatic means for creating pedestrian networks, this paper presents a methodology for extracting pedestrian network from aerial and laser images. The methodology consists of data preparation and four steps: object filtering, pedestrian path region extraction, pedestrian network construction, and raster to vector conversion. An experiment, using ten images, was conducted to evaluate the performance of the methodology. Evaluation results indicate that the methodology can extract sidewalk, crosswalk, footpath, and building entrances; it collects pedestrian networks with 61 percent geometrical completeness, 67.35 percent geometrical correctness, 71 percent topological completeness and 51.38 percent topological correctness. © 2013 American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing