Inclusive Indoor Navigation

Navigating across a building is a form of experiencing the characteristics (good and bad) of a space. Navigation aids for pedestrians, such as apps running on smartphones, are quite usefulness in large buildings or complex sets of buildings, such as airports, shopping malls, transportation hubs, hospitals or university campi, in particular for occasional visitors. Special users, such as visual impaired or wheelchair people, or other disabilities, have specific requirements for navigating across buildings. For these users, the suggested routes must take into account mobility and space awareness limitations.
One the dimension of this project investigates on how to design and build an inclusive indoor navigation system.
A navigation system is made of four main components, namely: (i) a space model; (ii) a positioning service; (iii) a routing service; (iv) a security architecture.
A proper space model includes a geometric representation of a building with all the relevant features (rooms, corridors, elevators, stairs, doors, etc.) and a topological model. The geometric model is relevant mostly for visualization and to provide space awareness to the users. The topological model is fundamental for finding the route(s) to a given destination. A positioning service estimates the position of a user within a building and is used to assist the navigation. Suggested trajectories (paths) to go from a given origin to a given destination are computed by a routing service, which must take into account the specific restrictions of each user. Detecting the presence of a person in a particular location, as well as tracking his/her position over time, rise security and privacy concerns. In order to preserve privacy, a navigation system must be integrated into a security framework.