PhD Research: The ACCESS framework - Using inertial sensors to understand and improve manual wheelchair navigation in cities
This PhD project by Roxana Ramirez Herrera at UCL aims to improve urban accessibility for manual wheelchair users. It explores how sensor technology and computing can better measure and present the real difficulty of pedestrian routes, going beyond basic metrics like ramp counts. Through co-design workshops, the project seeks to help users plan easier journeys and guide urban planners in identifying and addressing accessibility issues.
Parent project
PhD Research Programme
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Project Overview
Accessibility of the built environment is one of the most commonly reported barriers to physical activity among wheelchair users. While cities are increasingly working to address this, many places labelled as “accessible” are still underutilised by wheelchair users. This disconnect highlights the need for more nuanced approaches to evaluating urban accessibility.
Traditionally, accessibility is defined through basic, one-dimensional metrics—such as the number of ramps in an area. However, these simplistic indicators do not capture the full complexity of navigating an urban landscape. Recent research efforts have focused on developing systems to evaluate the difficulty of pedestrian routes and to map accessible points of interest. These efforts often rely on crowdsourced data, computer vision, or satellite imagery. While valuable, many remain documentation-focused and lack intuitive, user-friendly outputs.
This project, pursued as the PhD thesis of Roxana Ramirez Herrera at the UCL Interaction Centre, GDI Hub, and the Aspire CREATE lab, aims to take it further by utilising ubiquitous computing to develop comprehensive and understandable assessments of pedestrian accessibility.
The Challenge
The central research question is:
Can we use ubiquitous computing to provide a comprehensive measure of the accessibility of an urban landscape?
To address this, the project explores several sub-questions:
- What defines the difficulty of navigating a specific pedestrian route?
- Which physical and environmental features most effectively summarize that difficulty?
- How can sensor technology be employed to quantify these features?
- How can the resulting data be communicated in a way that is clear and useful to end users?
Impact
The outcomes of this research are intended to benefit both wheelchair users and urban planners. For users, the project seeks to support better journey planning and a more enjoyable urban experience. For planners, it offers data-driven insights into accessibility gaps, facilitating more inclusive city design.
Publications
Journal Articles
- A Cross-Sectional Study Using Wireless Electrocardiogram to Investigate Physical Workload of Wheelchair Control in Real World Environments (2020)
- Neuroergonomic Assessment of Wheelchair Control Using Mobile fNIRS (2020)
Conference Papers
- Breathing Biofeedback Relaxation Intervention for Wheelchair Users in City Navigation (2020)
- Novice vs Experienced Wheelchair Users: Perceived Difficulty of Task Performance With and Without a Push-Rim-Activated Power-Assisted Wheelchair (PAPAW) (2019)
Link to publication - Towards a Wearable Wheelchair Monitor: Classification of Push Style Based on Inertial Sensors at Multiple Upper Limb Locations (2018)
Poster Presentations
- Towards a Sensor-Based System for Assessing Powered Mobility Skills in Children (2017)
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