Enabling Mobility for the Elderly: Design and Implementation of Assistant Navigation Service

Enabling mobility of elderly people increases their independence and active participation in society. In supporting mobility of elderly use of public transportation is a key element, which is a complex system where it is not easy to find a route to desired destination and this difficulty is compounded when passenger has lowered cognitive and sensory abilities and may even have problems in movement. This article describes a construction of a mobile navigation guide for the elderly, which is designed with the specialness of the target group in mind. The implementation of the navigational guide was "designed for failure" which takes into account that outages will occur and must be managed, ensuring that the elderly passenger is not left without any help. This article will delineate the design decisions and the implementation of the system which has been piloted in three European cities in Spain, Austria and Finland. Findings of first evaluation pilot are included and next steps are described.