PathPass: Opening doors for people with disabilities

Conventional “push a button” door openers introduce significant difficulty for disabled persons using canes or wheelchairs. This paper presents a new design for creating easy and safe accessibility conditions through the establishment of an advanced interaction between the person and the accessibility control of the building. Based on this concept, an integrated architecture for door openers, called PathPass, is proposed that introduces easy to use equipment by the person and to the door´s control unit allowing the performance of a wide range of operational modes. Finally a prototype implementation of PathPass is presented.