Urban Flow Autonomous Wheelchair Phase 4: Fleet Management System and Health Facility Deployment

Morgan State University’s autonomous wheelchair (AW) project has completed three phases of research and development, culminating in a high-profile public demonstration at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport (BWI) in 2025, growing from a single prototype to a fleet of three LiDAR- and camera-equipped wheelchairs operable via the UrbanFlow smartphone application. Phase 4 advances the project on three fronts, collectively moving the technology from a research prototype toward real-world, scalable deployment. First, researchers will complete a Fleet Management and Operator Dashboard, replacing the existing one-to-one operator model with a centralized system capable of controlling the full wheelchair fleet. Second, the team will deploy and test the AW system in a new indoor environment, the Morgan State University Health and Human Services (HHS) Center. Third, it will develop a Digital Twin of the UrbanFlow deployment environment, enabling virtual simulation of wheelchair navigation scenarios to accelerate testing and support future multi-site planning. Organized across five tasks, Phase 4 will deliver a Fleet Management and Operator Dashboard enabling one operator to simultaneously oversee, dispatch, and control the entire wheelchair fleet, with live location tracking, battery and status monitoring, automated low-battery alerts, remote override, centralized dispatch, fleet analytics, and fault and maintenance flagging. The dashboard will be validated through live multi-wheelchair sessions at BWI and on campus with iterative operator usability testing. The team will map, configure, and deploy the AW system within the HHS Center to establish a fully operational navigation environment at a new site type, and will develop a Digital Twin, a virtual replica of the physical deployment environment integrated with UrbanFlow, as a simulation and planning tool.

• Record URL:
  • https://smartercenter.org/about-2/projects/urban-flow-autonomous-wheelchair-phase-4-fleet-management-system-and-health-facility-deployment/

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $160,000.00
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3552348303

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590
• Managing Organizations:

  Safety and Mobility Advancements Regional Transportation and Economics Research Center

  Morgan State University
  Baltimore, MD  United States 
• Performing Organizations:

  Safety and Mobility Advancements Regional Transportation and Economics Research Center

  Morgan State University
  Baltimore, MD  United States 
• Principal Investigators:

  Jeihani, Mansoureh

  Nyarko, Kofi

• Start Date: 20260801
• Expected Completion Date: 20280301
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Autonomous vehicles; Demonstration projects; Digital twins; Wheelchairs
• Identifier Terms: Morgan State University
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Planning and Forecasting; Transportation (General); Vehicles and Equipment;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01998038
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Sustainable Mobility and Accessibility Regional Transportation Equity Research Center
• Contract Numbers: 69A3552348303
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Aug 1 2026 10:43AM