Wayfinding, indoor navigation solution for visually impaired

RFI: Wayfinding, indoor navigation solution for visually impaired

Buyer: United Nations Procurement Division

Closing Date for Receipt of RFI: 27 December

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this Request for Information (RFI) is to provide the Office of Information and Communication Technology with information from the market to identify potential vendors that have the capability to implement the goal of improving accessibility, particularly for persons with disabilities as well as to know its implementation and maintenance budgetary cost with the aim of launching a formal solicitation in the near future. The service provider shall facilitate the navigation of buildings on the UNHQ campus for staff and visitors, and provide the individual with relevant information related to their route by implementing a readyto-use beaconless indoor navigation solution with enough positional accuracy and voice turn-by-turn navigation guidance for the visually impaired. The solution should provide enough positional accuracy for indoor navigation by the visually impaired and should require no additional hardware or infrastucture (i.e., beacons) except the associated required application servers and the client devices.

SCOPE: The way-finding system shall be able to accurately locate a person by locating her/his mobile phone and provide non-visual guidance to a set of possible destinations including nearest bathroom (if the bathrooms are separated by gender it shall navigate to the bathroom of the user’s choice), and to a specific konference room or other specific location. The system shall also be able to help a person navigate a preset path such as a path of a tour of the GA building that visitors take and should provide location-based information appropriate to the person’s location, such as a pre-recorded audio describing an exhibit.

SUBMISSION: It should be noted that by submitting a reply to this RFI does not automatically guarantee or obligate the UN to invite any particular company to participate in the subsequent bidding process. Only those prospective companies that are deemed qualified by UN upon completion of an objective evaluation of their submission to the RFI will be invited to participate in any subsequent tender exercise.

Relevant entities responding to this Request for Information should:

a) Provide documentation at a high level that details the solution design and how it operates

b) Provide the latest indoor positional accuracy test results for the solution – when, where, and details

c) Provide a list of reference sites – location and use-case(s)

d) Provide details on the licensing model, implementation and annual maintenance cost of the solution

e) Confirm that no additional hardware, i.e. beacons, are required to implement the solution

f) Provide company profile and list of relevant services and features for the solution

The solution must support the below technical requirements:

Mandatory requirements

– Solution works without hardware beacon and/or signal generating devices requirement except a client mobile device

– Solution provides mobile applications for both Apple iOS and Google/Android platforms

– Solution provided mobile applications must support respective platform’s native accessibility features such as, Talkback for Google/Android and VoiceOver for Apple iOS

– Solution provided mobile applications must be available to the respective app store of each platform

– Solution provided mobile applications must support latest operating system version along with at least two previous major versions

– Solution provides turn-by-turn audio guidance to users

Non-mandatory requirements

– Solution provides positional accuracy be within 1 meter

– Solution provides an interface that UN can dynamically update indoor space information if needed

. Command line interface

. Graphic user interface

. Mobile app interface

– Solution detects a user’s initial position automatically

. A user must input

. Automatically with some user input

. Automatically with no user input

– Solution provides an indoor position SDK/library that can be used for other mobile applications

. Apple iOS

. Google/Android

– List solution provides mobile applications with different graphic interfaces for different user groups

For example:

. A graphic interface for persons with visual impairment

. A graphic interface for persons with mobility impairment

– Solution provides mobile applications that support all UN official languages: . Arabic . Chinese . English . French . Russian . Spanish