Ellison Hall Guidance System Kei-ichi Okunuki Richard Church Jim Marston
Develop a route guidance system that helps people, particularly people in wheelchairs, find how to get to their destinations inside a building, showing a barrier-free shortest path..
Show the entire route over different floors simultaneously with bird's-eye-view maps.
Provide this system through the Internet.
This system is a route guidance system that helps people, particularly people in wheelchairs, find how to get to their destinations inside a building, avoiding barriers to travel. This system finds the route that minimizes the travel distance and shows the entire route over different floors simultaneously with bird's-eye-view maps, instead of showing a route on each floor separately. This system can be used through the Internet; its advantages are (a) that users may use it on any computer platform such as IBM based, Macintosh (based on a concept of interoperability) and (b) they can pre-plan a route from another location. Ellison Hall (University of California at Santa Barbara) was used for this study.
Handicapped people would like to pre-plan a route in order to get to their destinations avoiding barriers(e.g., stairs) or to locate facilities available to them (e.g., bathrooms, drinking fountains). The ADA(Americans with Disabilities Act) of 1990 mandates that all people should be allowed equal access to buildings and transit. However, a person must have information about the locations of these amenities before they can use them. For example, some drinking fountains are set lower so that people in wheelchairs may access them. Therefore, handicapped people need to get the information about where accessible facilities are located and how they can get there. This system enables them to get such information before visiting the site, avoiding time-consuming trial and error route selection.
It also can be beneficial to get such information while moving around a building, which can be made possible by mobile computers. This system can be used on mobile computers because of its availability through the Internet as mentioned above.
This system was implemented with JAVA so that users may use it on any computer platform. Users can use this system if they only have a web browser such as Netscape.
so that users may use it on any computer platform. Users can use this system if they only have a web browser such as Netscape.
In a virtual environment, people can experience a three-dimensional space as if they were walking around in the real world. It should be very helpful for handicapped people to get such information as the height of a drinking fountain in a virtual environment. VRML(Virtual Reality Modeling Language) enables one to offer a virtual environment through the Internet. Virtual environments constructed with VRML can be seen with a browser such as Netscape with a plug-in interpreting VRML. In addition, VRML allows us to get and use vector type data through the Internet, and we can import spatial data, visualize spatial information, or operate (rotate/transform/scale) 3D objects. can import spatial data, visualize spatial information, or operate (rotate/transform/scale) 3D objects.
Ellison Hall consists of two buildings, a north wing and a T-shaped south wing. The two buildings are connected (see right), but there are steps at the connecting point both on the ground floor and on the third floor (see left). Wheelchair users are not able to go between these two wings. Other people with ambulatory problems may be able to climb these several steps but not a flight of steps. People need to know the shortest and barrier-free route. Which was the reason this research was conducted.
In Ellison Hall all of the bathrooms are not accessible to wheelchair users. The location of accessible bathrooms should be available to them without having to conduct a search in the building. Pre-planning allows people to use a building in a more efficient manner. Information about other facilities should also be included, such as drinking fountains, lowered copiers, heavy or automatic doors and lowered phones. This system provides information about bathrooms, drinking fountains and phones, and more improvement are planned for the future of this project.
t.
A hybrid network and grid database is applied to this guidance system. Shortest path algorithms have already been applied for a network database, and also for a grid database. However, for a hybrid network and grid database they have never been applied. This research is the first application of a shortest path algorithm (Dijkstra’s algorithm) for a hybrid network and grid database.
A dynamic visualizing method for 3D spatial information is proposed. When users input their profiles and needs, this system calculate and dynamically visualize the 3D shortest route.
In this research, the length of a route and barriers are evaluated as keys to accessibility, but many other things should be considered. They are slope, roughness of roads, crowds, doors pressure, obstacles, elevator wait times and so forth. The choice behavior also should be considered. For example, people would have different choices between using stairs or an elevator. Evaluation of accessibility needs studies about all of things mentioned above.
At this time, we have no ideas about the best way to show the 3D spatial information. An evaluation of 3D visualization will be needed to develop systems implementing 3D visualizations.
One of some problems with this guidance system is the necessity for users to input their positions. A GPS or other positioning systems will make it unnecessary and users can get their positions automatically.