PRE2017 1 Groep3

Members of group 3
Karlijn van Rijen	0956798
Gijs Derks	0940505
Tjacco Koskamp	0905569
Luka Smeets	0934530

Introduction

The technology of robotics is an unavoidable rapidly evolving technology which could bring lots of improvements for the modern world as we know it nowadays. The challenge is however to invest in the kind of robotics that will make its investments worthwhile instead of investing in a research that will never be able to pay its investments back. In this report we are going to investigate into a robotics technology that we think is worthwhile looking into. In this chapter it will be explained what the societal issue is that we want to tackle, what we want to achieve for this issue and how we plan on achieving this, respectively.

Problem Definition

When you travel by train on a regular basis you might have noticed that when people in a wheelchair need to exit or entry the train it goes rather slow. Before they can get on or off the train the train personnel is needed first to get some sort of ramp to make the disabled people able to board or deboard the train. When someone in a wheelchair is on board or wants to go on board of the train the train might even be delayed because of this. As we know trains in the Netherlands tend to be too late every time and therefore every obstacle that is getting in the way of letting them ride on time, should be taken care of. The wheelchair problem is definetely one of them. Imagine you are in a wheelchair and want to board the train. First you have to look for someone of the staff to ask if they can help you board the train. Someone of the staff will then get the ramp and help you board the train when it has arrived. When you have reached your destination and you want to exit the train again someone of the staff at the trainstation has to get the ramp and help you deboard the train. As you can see it is a lot more difficult for people with a handicap to be able to easily travel by train. Every time they want to travel by train they are dependent of other people. The feeling of constantly being dependent on others is for most people the worst part of living with a handicap. Because of this dependency the treshold for these people to travel by train is much higher. When they stop using the train it might have an impact on there social being which might cause loneliness and even depression. We as group 3 want to improve the service at trainstations for disabled people by using the technology of robotics.