Professor Harriehausen-Mühlbauer studied Linguistics and Computer Science at the University of California Santa Barbara and Berkeley, where she did her PhD work in the field of Natural Language Processing. She worked at IBM’s Research Centers in Yorktown Heights, New York and Heidelberg, Germany in the knowledge-based-systems group, primarily working on the development of electronic grammars. In 2000, she accepted a tenure position at the Computer Science Department in Darmstadt, Germany, continuing her research on NLP, and running projects in the area of mobile computing. Professor Harriehausen-Mühlbauer holds visiting professor positions at the University of Utah and the University of California, Berkeley, as well as an honorary professorship at the University of Post and Telecommunication in Xi’an, China.

Modern information technology can improve life for people with special needs. Mobility impaired people are often confronted with barriers along their chosen routes which lead to unreachable destinations and frustration. Not only outdoor barriers, such as steep ramps, stairs, or uneven surface conditions are often insurmountable for mobility impaired users, but also indoor barriers, such as broken elevators, can lead to unreachable destinations. We have developed a mobile application which computes and displays barrier-free routes between outdoor or indoor locations in case barriers are detected along the shortest route. Our multi-modal interface includes voice control.