SilverWay
The increasing spread of ubiquitous computing is contributing in the improvement of the people’s quality of life thanks to the large amount of data made available by the customary use of technological devices as support tools for everyday tasks.
As the full integration of the citizens in the urban fabric represents one of the challenges of tomorrow, innovative solutions are needed in order to radically change how the people experience the city in terms of accessibility, social inclusion, security and community well-being.
In particular an improved mobility framework can help the most vulnerable and needy strata of the society such as elders and impaired people that are often excluded or poorly integrated in the workflow of the urban “jungle”.
Several solutions have been released by the major technological players to address these specific needs.
However, architectural barriers are not the only obstacle that can be encountered along the way and shorter routes are not always the best if we consider other factors in addition to the time taken.
Ab.Acus aims to develop new pedestrian navigation apps that thanks to the different walking profiles available, tailors the most suitable route according to the specific user needs, taking in account all the path parameters responsible for the quality and safety of the walking path.
SilverWay
SilverWay is the innovative walking navigation app made by Ab.Acus that exploits collective intelligence to tailor elders’ urban experience to specific needs or abilities.
SilverWay is an OSM-based system that integrates the information coming from the smart mobility system of the city into a cloud architecture whose interface with the end user is represented by an Android mobile application. SilverWay has been set up as an innovative solution in the field of sustainable and accessible mobility exploiting Artificial and Collective Intelligence to provide a better urban experience.
The pedestrian routing algorithm allows the choice among 4 profiles – foot, accessible, healthy and impaired – to ensure the most suitable route according to the needs of each user. It recommends suitable paths taking into account roads’ conditions and user’s health status to support autonomous navigation.
SilverWay’s users have got the following functionalities at their fingertips:
- Find the most suitable route according to its accessibility needs
- Search for nearby Point of Interest by finding the most accessible for each category
- Participate in the care of the city by reporting feedbacks about the accessibility level of each path
Maps are labelled at local level through devoted “tags” overcoming the limits of existing navigation apps not correctly tailored to the local settings. Tags identify features of the territory to be taken into account in suggesting paths (e.g. slope, light, green areas, surface quality).
Also, our pedestrian mobility can be integrated with the public transport information system to provide a complete, sustainable and accessible routes even for multi-modal paths. Our architecture can be easily integrated with any kind of public databases and in particular with the open data published by EU institutions and bodies.
SilverWay works also as a wellness and wellbeing monitoring tool thanks to the embedded motion tracking features that exploits the user smartphone sensors to track the activity along the provided path. This information acts both as a stimulus for the user in performing aerobic training and as a transparent monitoring tool that can provide lifestyle data to local area doctors and healthcare providers about their beneficiaries.
Thus, SilverWay can also be used as a tool to support Adapted Physical Activity program for elders and impaired people by combining safety paths, physical activity and local knowledge. A Street Workout tool that enables everyone to safely perform physical activity through the city’s streets regardless of the accessibility level needed.