UCare: Context-Aware Services for Disabled Users in Urban Environments

In this work, we present UCare (Urban Care), a context-aware, flexible architecture that provides rich environment adaptation services to disabled users. We have considered bidirectional adaptability, that is, adapting the system interface to user capabilities and system capabilities to user needs. To accomplish this goal, UCare provides two operation modes: non-interactive, whose main property is transparency, and interactive mode, allowing direct user participation in service operation. Both services and user capabilities are described by means of profiles, which are jointly processed to select suitable services for the users. The UCare platform offers the building blocks to develop applications that meet the corresponding requirements.

[1]  Jim Kurose,et al.  Computer Networking , 2000 .

[2]  R. Kitchin,et al.  'Out of Place', 'Knowing One's Place': Space, power and the exclusion of disabled people , 1998 .

[3]  Ingo Zinnikus,et al.  An Ontology-Based Recommendation System for Elderly and Disabled Persons , 2002 .

[5]  Jeffrey Nichols,et al.  Controlling Home and Office Appliances with Smart Phones , 2006, IEEE Pervasive Computing.

[6]  Stathes Hadjiefthymiades,et al.  A human-centered semantic navigation system for indoor environments , 2005, ICPS '05. Proceedings. International Conference on Pervasive Services, 2005..

[7]  George Roussos,et al.  Enabling pervasive computing with smart phones , 2005, IEEE Pervasive Computing.

[8]  Vlad Coroama.  Experiences from the design of a ubiquitous computing system for the blind , 2006, CHI EA '06.

[9]  Gerhard Fischer,et al.  Socio-technical environments supporting people with cognitive disabilities using public transportation , 2005, TCHI.

[10]  H. Hurley.  computer networking. , 1996, Ostomy/wound management.

[11]  Thomas Ertl,et al.  Design and development of an indoor navigation and object identification system for the blind , 2004, ACM SIGACCESS Access. Comput..

[12]  Abdelsalam Helal,et al.  Drishti: an integrated navigation system for visually impaired and disabled , 2001, Proceedings Fifth International Symposium on Wearable Computers.

[13]  Stathes Hadjiefthymiades,et al.  OntoNav: A Semantic Indoor Navigation System , 2005, MCMP@MDM.

[14]  Kunihiro Chihara,et al.  Wearable Computer for the Blind-Aiming at a Pedestrian's Intelligent Transport Systems- , 2000 .