Analysis and Experiment of Wireless Optical Communications in Applications Dedicated to Mobile Devices with Applicability in the Field of Road and Pedestrian Safety

Smartphone Sensors for Indoor Positioning

The explosive growth and wide proliferation of mobile devices, the majority of which are smartphones, led to the inception of several novel and intuitive services, including on-the-go services, online customer services, and location-based services (LBS) [...].

Design, Implementation and Experimental Investigation of a Pedestrian Street Crossing Assistance System Based on Visible Light Communications

In urban areas, pedestrians are the road users category that is the most exposed to road accident fatalities. In this context, the present article proposes a totally new architecture, which aims to increase the safety of pedestrians on the crosswalk. The first component of the design is a pedestrian detection system, which identifies the user's presence in the region of the crosswalk and determines the future street crossing action possibility or the presence of a pedestrian engaged in street crossing. The second component of the system is the visible light communications part, which is used to transmit this information toward the approaching vehicles. The proposed architecture has been implemented at a regular scale and experimentally evaluated in outdoor conditions. The experimental results showed a 100% overall pedestrian detection rate. On the other hand, the VLC system showed a communication distance between 5 and 40 m when using a standard LED light crosswalk sign as a VLC emitter, while maintaining a bit error ratio between 10^-7 and 10^-5. These results demonstrate the fact that the VLC technology is now able to be used in real applications, making the transition from a high potential technology to a confirmed technology. As far as we know, this is the first article presenting such a pedestrian street crossing assistance system.

Defining a Digital System for the Pedestrian Network as a Conceptual Implementation Framework

In cities today, the digitalization of mobility is one of the most crucial tools that link each single mobility service providers (e.g., ride sharing, public transportation, air travel, etc.) to users. Based on the smart pedestrian network model, the purpose of this study is to initially provide the requirements towards the digitalization of a pedestrian network model and subsequently to draft an institutional framework towards the effective implementation and management of pedestrian mobility that will develop/create a pedestrian network as a new structure in the city. The methodology is applied in three phases, with three separate approaches: “desk approach” for a data gathering standard that is knowledge-based and connected to walkability; a “digitalization approach” for citizen and stakeholder participation in policy co-creation; and a “business approach”. A business approach is defined as a set of operations that takes one or more types of input and produces a customer-valued outcome. In this case, customers are citizens and the business approach by applying a digital system is assessing policies and finding/defining an optimized combination of shared applicable/effective policies to implement the pedestrian network. By boosting an innovative linkage of these three phases, digitalization of the pedestrian network has great potential to improve the walkability planning process and therefore to create more sustainable and livable urban spaces.