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A research team from the inLab FIB at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC), together with the Asociación de Personas con Movilidad Reducida (AsoPMR), has taken part in the Spot4Dis project to enhance the mobility and autonomy of people with reduced mobility.
The Asociación de Personas con Movilidad Reducida (AsoPMR) supports the improvement of autonomy within this community by sharing useful information and promoting socially impactful projects. One of its key initiatives is Spot4Dis, an application designed to identify and geolocate parking spaces reserved for people with disabilities. Although it already has a database with more than 85,000 accessible parking spaces, the main challenge has been to improve the accuracy and coverage of the mapping, as well as the user experience. To address this, the project has benefited from the support of Google.org Fellows, using artificial intelligence and advanced digital tools such as voice commands, satellite imagery, and detection algorithms to expand the existing database.
Within the Spot4Dis application, inLab FIB has developed an intelligent module capable of automatically detecting parking spaces for people with reduced mobility based on:
- Satellite and street imagery
- Advanced computer vision algorithms
- Deep learning models
This module has been trained using data from five pilot cities: Valencia, Zaragoza, Badajoz, and A Coruña (Spain), and Genoa (Italy).
Impact
This new technological component will make it possible to automatically expand and update the accessible map, improving territorial coverage and reducing reliance on manual data entry.
The improvement of Spot4Dis will facilitate travel planning, reduce accessibility barriers, and strengthen the personal autonomy of thousands of people with reduced mobility. Through technology and collaboration between social organisations and research centres, the project moves towards more inclusive and accessible cities for everyone.
Budget and Funding
The project has received a total budget of 1.5M € and has a duration of one year (April 2024 – April 2025).
Technology
Sector
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- City and Play is a social action project coordinated by researchers from the Centre for Image and Multimedia Technology (CITM) and the DiCode research group (Digital Culture and Creative Technologies Research Group) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya – BarcelonaTech (UPC), the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) and the University of Barcelona (UB), and funded by Barcelona City Council. The aim of the project is to promote civic competences and reflection on the urban environment among adolescents through the creation of an open framework that uses methodologies based on play, co-creation and storytelling.
