Assisting Pedestrians with Vision Disabilities in Navigating Urban Streets – Lessons Learned from the NYC Connected Vehicle Pilot Mobile Accessible Pedestrian Signal System

New York City is piloting connected vehicle (CV) technology to support the Vision Zero initiative and help eliminate injuries and fatalities caused by crashes. In Manhattan, 73% of all crash fatalities involve pedestrians while this figure is only 14% nationwide. As a part of the USDOT CV Pilot Deployment Program, two pedestrian oriented applications are deployed: 1) a generalized warning to vehicles of pedestrians in the roadway based on thermal imaging detection and 2) a Mobile Accessible Pedestrian Signal System (PED-SIG) application to assist pedestrians with vision disabilities. The PED-SIG application supports cellular communications to receive localized Signal Phase and Timing (SPaT) and MAP messages broadcast by the local Roadside Unit (RSU) to provides audio alerts and haptic prompts to assist pedestrians with vision disabilities in safely crossing streets at instrumented intersections. Volunteer participants with vision disabilities were recruited to participate in the field tests where Personal Information Devices (PIDs) were given to participants. This seminar will present how the pedestrian application was designed, deployed and tested along with several valuable lessons learned throughout the deployment.

Speaker:

Dr. Jingqin (Jannie) Gao is currently working as a senior research associate at C2SMART University Transportation Center funded by the US Department of Transportation. She received her Ph.D. and M.S. in Transportation Planning and Engineering from New York University, and her B.S. in Science and Technology of Optical Information from Tongji University. Her research interests lie in emerging technologies with emphasis on connected and automated vehicles, accessible transportation, big data and artificial intelligence solutions for transportation, traffic simulation modeling, and parking management. She was one of the lead researchers in evaluating the performance of the New York City Connected Vehicle Pilot Deploymentand and testing the mobile accessible pedestrian application. Before joining NYU, she worked for the New York City Department of Transportation on modeling and data analysis to support the agency’s internal planning and technical review processes. Jingqin plays a leadership role both within her research group and for the larger NYU Tandon community, serving as the past president of the student chapters of the Institute of Transportation Engineers and the Intelligent Transportation Society.