Enhancing the Computation of Barrier-free Routes via Crowdsourcing

Abstract

Navigation systems rely on a large amount of geodata for their route com-putations. Depending on the used map material and application, this geo-data includes barrier information, such as staircases or steep inclines, which is helpful for mobility impaired people when looking for a barrier-free route. On the basis of OpenStreetMap (OSM), which is included in the GraphHopper routing engine, we have developed the mobility app WheelScout , which computes barrier-free routes using the users’ individu-al mobility profile as well as barrier information which is extracted from OSM but also included by our users – both manually and automatically via data which the sensors in the mobile devices gather via crowdsourcing. Us-ing the example of inclines, we will demonstrate how we automatically compute the information of this barrier by gathering information on baro-metric altitude data and using those to compute the degree of the incline and therefore the barrier.

Keywords: Croud Sourcing, Barrier-Free Routing, Mobile App

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1001031