Towards an Ontology-Based Decision Support System to Support Car-Reconfiguration for Novice Wheelchair Users

The ability to drive a vehicle is fundamental to fostering people’s independence, especially people characterized by physical disability. European regulations foresee that these drivers’ cars need to undergo a process of adaptations that may involve modifying the vehicle’s mechanics and adding specific driving aids depending on the particular driver’s health condition. Since drivers can have access to different configurations for their vehicles, they may not be familiar with driving aids and how they modify the driving activity. To help drivers understand the possible car configurations and their aids, this work proposes an ontology-based decision support system (DSS) to identify the possible configurations and explicit the list of driving aids and mechanical modifications that the vehicle must equip. The DSS leverages ontology-based knowledge representation within the Rip@rto research project to determine and illustrate the possible car configurations. Also, taking advantage of a driving simulator and cognitive assessment of drivers, the DSS may support clinical personnel in defining restrictions and limitations to the use of vehicles for some drivers. This paper presents the ontology engineering process, delving into the domain analysis, conceptualization, and development phase of the DSS prototype, and sketches the future research directions.