App & Town Compagnon
- Barcelona, Spain; Madrid, SPain; Laval, Canada
App&Town Compagnon (App&Town Companion (ATC)) is an innovative intelligent guidance system that enables autonomous navigation and multimodal public transport use for people with mild to moderate cognitive and physical disabilities.
Service Provided
ATC is a mobile app that guides from a point of origin to a destination using metropolitan transport in cities that have partnered with the app.
Intended Users
The app is intended for users with mild to moderate cognitive and physical disabilities, who can travel alone safely with the guidance of the app.
Benefits
ATC helps adults feel safer and more confident in traveling independently on public transit, promoting social inclusion without increasing the need for car travel.
Service Details
The application provides clear step-by-step directions and instructions that are customized for each user’s needs, improving their mobility, independence, self-esteem and quality of life. After downloading the app, an operator or supervisor registers a user and who their legal tutor will be. A tutor, operator, and supervisor can create different routes for the user.
During transit, a user is monitored. Within the configuration phase or when starting a trip, the operator and supervisor are assigned to the user, and are responsible for their supervision along the entire journey and to manage any incident that may arise. The user only has to open the app, choose a route, and follow the instructions until their final destination.
Notable functions of the app include real-time tracking of users over the entire trip chain for monitoring; algorithms that customize routes according to users’ capabilities and route difficulty; continuous fault monitoring of the system, battery level, GPS, mobile network connectivity, and any out-of-route movements.
The app is available on Android or iOS devices.
Financial Details
The ATC product is sold to cities, where the cost is determined by the complexity of a city’s public transport network, and the size of the available target market.
Once a city has procured MassFactory’s services, the app is free for endpoint users.
Mass Factory has an impact-based sustainable business model that aims to create both social and financial value from their ventures. i.e. that all products and services offered have an explicit intention to generate social benefits while creating financial returns for the business.
By decreasing expenditure on paratransit, public administration resources can be optimized and used more efficiently, thereby creating further social value.
Pierre Lavigueur, Development and Innovation Executive Director from Societé de Transport de Laval
"We were very surprised when with the first cohort of young people testing this app and there was one who gave back the phone two weeks later and said, 'Well you can have it back because I do not need it anymore.'
In the end, we saw that Compagnon could be a long-term support but also a companion who helps you to overcome obstacles. But once you get comfortable, you don't needs its support: you overcome the challenge, you gain confidence and everything works fine."
Laval, Canada
About the Service Providers
App&Town Compagnon was created by MassFactory, a technology-based company that emerged from the School of Engineering at the Autonomous University of Barcelona in 2012.
Currently the app has integrated public transit information for the cities of Madrid and Barcelona in Spain and Laval and Longueil in Canada. ATC is specifically designed to be used in urban areas with a well-developed public transport network.