Building Smart and Accessible Transportation Hubs with Internet of Things, Big Data Analytics, and Affective Computing

Large transportation hubs are difficult to navigate, especially for people with special needs such as those with visual impairment, Autism spectrum disorder (ASD), or simply those with navigation challenges. The primary objective of this research is to design and develop a novel cyber-physical infrastructure that can effectively and efficiently transform existing transportation hubs into smart facilities capable of providing better location-aware services. We investigated the integration of a number of internet of the things (IoT) elements, including video analytics, Bluetooth beacons, mobile computing, and facility semantic models, to provide reliable indoor navigation services to people with special needs, yet requiring minimum infrastructure changes. Our pilot tests with people with special needs at a multi-floor building in New York City has demonstrated the effectiveness of our proposed framework.