About ROLL-I
What is ROLL-I?
In everyday life, many factors can make getting around town difficult or impossible for wheelchair users. These include:
- uneven or difficult-to-drive-on surfaces, such as cobblestones or poorly laid paving slabs,
- Damage to the pavement,
- Narrow points caused by bollards, lampposts or other permanently installed objects,
- Steps, thresholds and kerbs,
- steep gradients,
- unsafe crossing points.
As a result, people often find themselves having to take energy-sapping detours, choose dangerous routes or avoid certain places altogether. The project collects information on the actual passability of paths, analyses it and makes it available for route planning.
- Automated assessment of accessibility
Manually recording the accessibility of urban transport infrastructure by individual stakeholders is a very labour-intensive process. To reduce this workload, we are investigating how data on road conditions and infrastructural barriers can be collected on a large scale and automatically. To this end, the project is trialling a crowdsourcing approach involving members of the target group. We are developing a modular sensor kit that can be attached to different types of wheelchairs and automatically collects data on obstacles and the road surface during wheelchair users’ everyday lives. In addition, as part of longer-term usage studies, users provide their subjective assessment of the navigability of inner-city route sections, for example in terms of comfort, safety or physical effort. - Analysis of route quality
In a second step, algorithms will be developed with the aim of creating an assessment model that classifies inner-city areas in terms of their accessibility and passability. This assessment model is intended to replace subjective assessments in future and will make it possible to evaluate routes solely on the basis of their objective parameters. - Route planning and visualization
Based on the assessed route sections, an application is being developed that allows users to find out about the accessibility of urban infrastructure and to plan accessible routes. The project is also investigating how information on route quality can be presented in a clear and understandable way.
In the ROLL-I project, we are taking a user-centred, participatory approach. This means that we work with people from the target group at all relevant stages of the research process. The aim is to ensure that our solution not only works from a technical point of view, but is actually helpful in everyday life.
Who is ROLL-I relevant for?
ROLL-I is primarily aimed at people who rely on accessible routes. These include, in particular:
- wheelchair users,
- People with reduced mobility,
- older people,
- People with pushchairs or luggage,
- People with chronic conditions or symptoms of fatigue.
Furthermore, the project findings may also be relevant to local authorities, urban planning, tourism, transport authorities, research and civil society organisations. In the long term, the mapping exercise can provide insights into where barriers in urban spaces occur particularly frequently and where improvements would be particularly important.
