Customized Walk Paths for the Elderly

Abstract

Nowadays a large number of applications rely on appropriate path planning stressing the importance of such algorithms. Usually the path planning can be adjusted by the transportation type (walking, cycling, driving) and special restrictions as roads blockages. However these adjustments are not enough for other tasks such as planning a walk path of a given size for the elderly, a tourist office application for planning a journey based on desired points of interest to visit, among other. A project named Smartwalk dedicated to helping the elderly in taking an appropriate amount of steps each day, for improving their autonomy, independence and functional capacity, needs to take into account several factors in the path planning. Some are related to avoiding problematic areas such as stairs or slippery streets, also, to increase the chance of long term adoption, it is important that people exercise in familiar environments. So, the objective is to allow plan routes through places where people live, including points of interest such as gardens and touristic places, and avoiding areas more difficult or less desirable for people (e.g. streets with stairs). In this paper we describe how the project is being deployed in Águeda - Portugal, a city with less than 50 k inhabitants and featuring a data communication infrastructure in its urban area. A demonstration of the algorithm working and some performance tests are presented and discussed.