Congress and Conference Contributions

By use of knowledge from biomedical engineering, ergonomics, information and communication technologies as well as from robotics and mechatronics an assistance system for several handicapped and elderly is in development. The aim of the project called TAS" (Tourist Assistance System) was the development and exemplary assembly of an assistance system for people with impairments as an access support to previously bad or not reachable tourism offers. It was implemented into a chosen model region in Thuringia / Germany. One of the main principles in this project was to use, combine and adapt market available components of the abovementioned technical areas. In this paper the design process of the assistance system and its main components and functions are described.

As the number of elderly and handicapped people in our society increases more and more it is important to take into account the special needs of these user groups. Most tasks of daily life can be achieved through learning recurring procedures. But new and unknown situations reveal problems most people with bodily limitations can not handle. This keeps most of these people from participating in holiday, leisure time and educational activities. This paper proposes a handheld/server based assistance system, which offers users with special needs access to recreational activities. Therefore it takes account of the needs of the user by including a scalable and easy to use user interface, a routing algorithm that evaluates barriers and the possibility to add medical observation as well as an emergency system.