Towards Human Smart Cities: Internet of Things for sensory impaired individuals

Cities are the places where the greatest technological changes will take place during the next few decades. Some years from now, important investments will be destined towards elaborating and implementing urban solutions. However, people with sensorial disabilities will still have to overcome the problem of autonomy in urban areas. Autonomy presumes the existence of the right conditions for complete relocation towards the desired destination. This is closely related to the process of planning buildings, sidewalks and signaling, among others and it is supported by legal measures, promoting accessibility. However, several barriers and the lack of information in urban areas should be faced meanwhile. In this paper, the features of a travel aid previously designed, were enhanced based on the Internet of Things—IoT. This approach has a goal to better suit the device to the smart cities’ context. To this end, an architecture combining both haptic feedback (tactile and auditory), acquiring relevant information from the environment, was designed. Quantitative and quantitative assessments obtained from experimental tests shows satisfactory results.