Building smart transportation hubs with internet of things to improve services to people with disabilities

Large transportation hubs are difficult to navigate, especially for people with disabilities such as those with visual or mobility impairment, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), or simply those with navigation challenges. The primary objective of this research is to design and develop a novel cyber-physical infrastructure that can effectively and efficiently transform existing transportation hubs into smart facilities capable of providing better location-aware services. We investigated the integration of a number of novel Internet of Things elements, including video analytics, low-cost Bluetooth beacons, mobile computing, and 3D semantic models, to provide reliable indoor navigation services to people with traveling challenges, yet requiring minimum infrastructure changes since our approach leverages existing cyber infrastructures such as surveillance cameras, facility models, and mobile phones, and incorporates a minimum number of new and small devices such as beacons to achieve reliable navigation services. The two unique features of our solution are the use of 3D digital semantic models and crowd analysis with surveillance cameras for providing the best available paths. We have started a pilot test with people with disabilities at a multi-floor building in New York City to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed framework.