Research students from the Lloyd's Register Foundation Transport Risk Management Centre (LRF TRMC) have won 1st prize at the 2 day Wayfindr Hackathon

The teams were tasked to improve either the performance or operational aspects of the Wayfindr app. Wayfindr is an app designed to help visually impaired people navigate independently through London Underground stations using Bluetooth Beacon Technology and audio navigation instructions.

The winning team was made up of four research students from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, all supervised by Dr Arnab Majumdar: Jean Marc Feghali, He-In Cheong, Georgia Bateman, and Alastair Shipman. They partnered with Alex Caskey (from the London-based start-up company Pointr: The Deep Location Company), to compete against seven other teams.

The Wayfindr app currently routes all users through station environments in the same way. The TRMC team’s winning idea was to build an extension to the app, which would ask the user a series of questions regarding their route preferences: for example bright lighting, level of crowding, and use of stairs, escalators, and lifts. Based on the information provided, the user would receive a route through the station that is tailored to their requirements. The judges commented positively on the easy implementation of the idea into the existing Wayfindr app, and the potential for integration with state-of-the-art accessibility technology such as the WeWALK Smart Cane.

Georgia Bateman said: “With the aid of Alex on the technical side, our team came up with the best idea of improving Wayfindr’s app. We all worked really hard, so thanks to all of the team and the event organisers for a great hackathon experience. We really hope that our idea will be incorporated into the app in the future, and can therefore be used to improve accessibility on the London Underground network and beyond.”

The event, which ran from 14-15^th November, was organised by Transport for London, Wayfindr, the RSSB, and Amazon Web Services, and was held at Amazon London HQ.