Ali Afghantoloee

Social participation of people with disabilities (PWD) is one of the challenging problems in our society. Social participation of PWD is influenced by results from the interactions between personal characteristics and the physical and social environments. The urban environment includes infrastructure and services designed for people without any disability and does not consider the specific needs of people with disabilities. One of the most significant daily activities in the urban environment is mobility which impacts on the social participation of PWD in relation to the various social aspects of their lives (e.g. going to work, the market, the museum, etc.). Assistive technologies as facilitators in the mobility of PWD enable (1) the guidance of a person while considering his capability with respect to physical environment factors, and (2) track changes in the environment and surrounding such as humans and objects embedded within the environment. Generally, in the physical environment, assistive technologies such as sensors and actuators can be deployed to track not only the dynamic information on the environment but also enable the environment in order to efficiently help people in their mobility. The emergence of the various type of technologies for tracking, monitoring, observing and positioning of mobile objects in complex indoor environments and providing the information to user offer new opportunities for experts and researchers to consider the development of novel technologies to better help PWD with their indoor mobility. We propose to design and develop enabled environments using sensors and actuators for the mobility of PWD. In this regard, the position and type of facilities impact the efficiency of their mobility. The most important contribution of this research is where are the perfect places of sensors and actuators network to efficiently guide the PWD in their mobility in the 3D complex indoor environment.

Direction: Mir Abolfazl Mostafavi

Codirection : Geoffrey Edwards