Pedestrian Location and Assistance

Problem Definition
The Pedestrian Location and Guidance project aims to monitor an intersection and locate pedestrians while in the crosswalk. The system is geared towards assisting visually impaired pedestrians who may have trouble safely crossing the street. If the pedestrian strays or remains in the crosswalk the system should be able to recognize this and either give feedback or lengthen the time to cross.

Background
The University of Idaho has a past in assisting impaired pedestrians at intersections. A previous senior design project at the University used Ethernet over Powerline to design a crosswalk button that can communicate and exchange information with the traffic controller. The Pedestrian Location and Guidance project will build off of this project to provide further protection to impaired pedestrians.

Deliverable
Methods and design setup. Code used for system. Experimental procedures and anything else needed to replicate project for future research and application.

A report on feasibility and usability of system design for assessment on application of technology in real world everyday use.

Project Learning
This system uses the Freescale Sensor Fusion test kit. This kit is a two part system of an embedded micro controller board and a system of sensors including: accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, pedometer and various others. This complement of sensors is available in most modern cell phones and allows us to take advantage of Freescales filtering and data combination algorithms to use the sensor data in more useful ways than we could individually.

Instead of using GPS, we are researching how accurately we can track someones location using these other senors as they cross the street. This is because GPS has a range of 10 feet which can be the difference between the person being in the crosswalk or not.