The overall goal of the Perron project is to improve pedestrian navigation by bringing it to a more detailed and realistic level. The following topics will be investigated:
Quality of Pedestrian Ways
Pedestrian route choice is affected by a number of parameters. Although distance is the most important determinant, other quality categories, such as quality of pedestrian facilities (e.g., pavements and crosswalks), safety (such as safe crossing facilities in reasonable distances), physical accessibility, attractiveness and comfort need to be considered. Further it is important that options to select suitable routes for all kinds of user groups are available. Additionally, there are soft factors such as trip purpose, social factors and mood, which have an impact on individual route choices. Within the project a model of pedestrian quality needs will be applied and validated in selected areas in public space. For the purpose of gaining quality related data, data collection methods will be developed and existing concepts further refined. Based on existing methods, a routing algorithm will be developed which takes into account the quality of pedestrian ways.
Road Crossing
Crossing the road on a route is in most cases not avoidable. In the inner city, pedestrians usually find dedicated crosswalks (zebra crossings and signal controlled crossings). However, in peripheral areas, dedicated crosswalks are rare and pedestrians are forced to cross streets under less optimal conditions. So far current routing algorithms can only calculate routes on a given graph and therefore only dedicated crosswalks are considered by routing and navigation services. These non-dedicated crossing locations will be calculated so that current routing algorithms can find optimal pedestrian routes. Existing routing approaches will be applied and evaluated. Additionally, new ones will be developed, in order to dynamically calculate pedestrian routes, taking into account crossing on non-dedicated locations. To this end, street network topology will be investigated and patterns for road crossing at non-dedicated crosswalks will be identified to develop algorithms for an intermodal context.
Pedestrian Navigation
Considering the quality of pedestrian ways and road crossings and taking roads into account as barrier for walking, it is necessary to extend and adapt existing navigation technologies. Special instructions and explanations are required for crossing the road away from dedicated crosswalks and when the quality of pedestrian ways influences the route choice (e.g., instructions for disabled persons regarding the accessibility). As pedestrians use navigation services in a ubiquitous context it is important to investigate innovative navigation instructions that include relevant points of interest. OSM data, will be therefore combined with map views and intermodal feedback will be provided to the user through new methods to generate and present pedestrian navigation instructions that meet the needs of pedestrians and ensure an optimal user experience.