Mercurics and SMU Applying Data Science of Collected Sensor Data to Identify Barrier-free Access Paths for Wheelchair Users

The SmartBFA v2 projects aims to provide mapping services for wheelchair users, so that they can find barrier-free paths when navigating around Singapore. This objective is in line with Singapore’s vision towards building a smart and inclusive city for everyone.

The current project is an extension of an earlier project (SmartBFA v1) which collects crowdsourced sensor data from wheelchair volunteers, as they go about their daily commute. These crowdsourced data are then analysed to determine their accessibility indices (e.g., road incline and bumpiness) that have been traversed by the volunteers.

SDSC will work closely with SMU and Mercurics on the data collection pipeline. In the current phase of the project, the project team aims to extend their work in the following ways:

(i) collect additional multi-modal data from the public;
(ii) improve the map matching and map construction accuracy of the collected sensor (GPS) data; and
(iii) collect user feedback, so that the design of the map interface for wheelchair users can be further refined.

Project Title: SmartBFA v2
Done By: Mercurics Pte Ltd, Singapore Management University (SMU) and Singapore Data Science Consortium (SDSC)
Contact Person: Prof Cheng Shih-fen, Associate Professor of Computer Science, Singapore Management University

This research is supported by the National Research Foundation, Singapore under its Industry Alignment Fund – Pre-positioning (IAF-PP) Funding Initiative.