Dr. Aaron Steinfeld (Carnegie Mellon University)

NCTSPM will co-host Dr. Aaron Steinfeld of Carnegie Mellon University with the Georgia Tech Robotics Club on October 22, 2015, for a Transportation Speaker Series event. Dr. Steinfeld is an Associate Research Professor with Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science and its Robotics Institute. He will be speaking on the topic of "Crowsourcing for Public Transit Users of All Abilities". 

In recent years, there has been a renewed focus on technologies that improve quality of life for older adults and people with disabilities. When combined with universal design, these technologies provide value to all users and lead to a larger societal impact. Crowdsourcing allows users to help each other and enhance technology functionality. This talk will demonstrate how to mix technology, crowdsourcing, and universal design to enhance quality of life.

Public transit is critical to daily life and is usually accessible in the United States due to the Americans with Disabilities Act and other regulations. However, important information, services, and functionality are often missing due to limited staffing or available technology. I will describe research activity by our team to address these challenges, the most prominent of which is Tiramisu Transit, a publicly deployed crowdsourcing app designed to provide key real-time transit information for people with disabilities. 

Dr. Aaron Steinfeld is an Associate Research Professor in the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his BSE, MSE, and Ph.D. degrees in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan, and completed postdoctoral studies at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the Co-Director of the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center on Accessible Public Transportation, Director of the DRRP on Inclusive Cloud and Web Computing, and the area lead for transportation-related projects in the Quality of Life Center. His research focuses on operator assistance under constraints, such as how to enable timely and appropriate interaction when technology use is restricted, through design, tasks, the environment, time pressures, or user abilities. His work includes intelligent transportation systems, crowdsourcing, human-robot interaction, rehabilitation, and universal design.