| Realistic and robust head-eye coordination of conversational robot actors in human tracking applications | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 1 | |
| Jartuwat Rajruangrabin; Dan O. Popa | |||
| Recent advances in computing and robot technology create new opportunities
for building robots with increasingly more sophisticated interactivity. One
such application is the visual interaction between humans and humanoid in tasks
such as mimicking and following. Achieving realistic head-eye motion of the
humanoid requires understanding of human kinesiology that dictates the way
human coordinate head-eye motion and the ability to control the motion of
humanoid to move in the same manner that humans do. In this paper we propose an
efficient head-eye motion coordination scheme using an optimization approach --
an objective function is formed based on human kinesiology and then optimized
for obtaining a realistic head-eye trajectory. The tracking robustness during
conversational interaction with a human is further enhanced through a visual
feedback scheme, which reduces modelling errors of the humanoid hardware.
Experimental results show the tracking efficiency and realism of the motion
generated by the proposed scheme with Lilly, a humanoid under development in
our lab. Keywords: human-robot interaction, humanoid robot, robotic actor | |||
| An efficient k-anonymous localization technique for assistive environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 2 | |
| Francesco Buccafurri; Gianluca Lax | |||
| In health assistive environments the possibility of knowing patient's
position can be very important, since may represent a valid support to medical
activities and assistance strategies. However, we cannot assume in general that
the utility of having precise information about patients' location is stronger
than the right of keeping private the access to some place and, more in
general, the exact movements that patients do in the environment. Thus, besides
the standard precise localization issue, we consider also the issue of
providing approximate non-deterministic answers about patients' positions in
such a way that privacy is protected but they can be anyway found with a small
number of attempts. The solution enforces the general concept of k-anonymity,
which we adapt in our context in a way different from the classical one. An
important aspect of our technique is that it is strongly efficient and
implementable via very cheap devices, which is a very relevant issue in
pervasive environments where wireless devices with limited processing
capability and power have to be utilized. Keywords: assistive environments, location tracking, privacy | |||
| Assistive music browsing using self-organizing maps | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 3 | |
| George Tzanetakis; Manjinder Singh Benning; Steven R. Ness; Darren Minifie; Nigel Livingston | |||
| Music listening is an important activity for many people. Advances in
technology have made possible the creation of music collections with thousands
of songs in portable music players. Navigating these large music collections is
challenging especially for users with vision and/or motion disabilities. In
this paper we describe our current efforts to build effective music browsing
interfaces for people with disabilities. The foundation of our approach is the
automatic extraction of features for describing musical content and the use of
self-organizing maps to create two-dimensional representations of music
collections. The ultimate goal is effective browsing without using any
meta-data. We also describe different control interfaces to the system: a
regular desktop application, an iPhone implementation, an eye tracker, and a
smart room interface based on Wii-mote tracking. Keywords: assistive technologies, content-aware user interfaces, eye tracking, music
information retrieval, sound analysis | |||
| SAL: a simulation and analysis tool for assistive living applications | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 4 | |
| Alan Bowling; Zhengyi Le; Fillia Makedon | |||
| Simulation and analysis of assistive environments are important because they
provide a first step towards creating an actual application for the real world.
This work details the development of simulation and analysis tools for the
Assistive Living Laboratory intended for use in the design of hardware and
software for an assisted living system composed of monitoring and response
systems. Monitoring is accomplished using a heterogeneous array of sensors
which allow determination of the patient's current condition, and assessment of
whether some action or intervention is required. The response subsystem carries
out any intervention and is monitored to determine the success of the action.
The analysis tools consider system performance and facilitate a design capable
of monitoring and responding to the needs of the patient. The simulation tool
includes the physics and programmed logic of the entities involved in the
problem, and allows verification of the final system design. This simulator
will help the development of applications for improving the quality of life of
people living in assistive environments. Keywords: assistive living environment, human and physics factors, monitor and
response, simulation, simulation and analysis tool | |||
| STFL: a spatio temporal filtering language with applications in assisted living | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 5 | |
| Athanasios Bamis; Andreas Savvides | |||
| In this paper we introduce the Spatio Temporal Filtering Language (STFL),
which is a language framework that aims to provide the primitives for easily
defining rules and sequences of rules and constraints. These sequences of rules
can be used to convert low-level streams of sensor data into higher-level
semantics and provide triggers for actuation. Among others STFL provides
support for heterogeneous types of sensors, composability and code reusability.
Special emphasis is given on the support of different categories of users by
providing different types of interfaces spanning from a natural-like language
aiming at end-users to a regular scripting language aiming at system
developers. The expressiveness and power of STFL is presented through an
assisted living scenario. Keywords: actuation, assisted living, human activity monitoring, spatiotemporal
filtering | |||
| Decision making in assistive environments using multimodal observations | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 6 | |
| Yong Lin; Eric Becker; Kyungseo Park; Zhengyi Le; Fillia Makedon | |||
| An assistive environment is a smart domestic space based on pervasive
computing to support the elderly and disabled. Unlike sensors, which can only
provide passive monitoring, a robot can be an active element to improve the
quality of life for the human. In this paper, we propose an active service of
the robot in assistive environments, to help human in the case of emergency
situation. It works on a hierarchical partially observable Markov decision
process (POMDP). The multimodal observation series are used in the decision and
evaluation process.
An active robot is a kind of robot that can provide a preferable and necessary active service to the human. This is used in our emergency response system (ERS) to deal with the emergency situations, such as an older adult falls down or emergency diseases. The purpose of multimodal observations is to guarantee the precision of report for the emergency situations. Four observation sources are introduced in this paper: the vision recognition, the voice recognition, the physical input devices and the foreign systems. For each observation source, there are two observation series. Multiple information sources give the agent more opportunities to learn from the real world, so as to make more reasonable predictions, evaluations and decisions. Keywords: assistive environment, decision making, elderly care, human-robot interface | |||
| Human behavioral detection and data cleaning in assisted living environment using wireless sensor networks | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 7 | |
| Kyungseo Park; Eric Becker; Jyothi K. Vinjumur; Zhengyi Le; Fillia Makedon | |||
| Due to the increasing number of the elderly, more and more people need to
have additional health care such as medical or environmental monitoring
information at home or nursing facility. Most elderly people are likely to have
a sudden behavioral changes due to their aging or existing health problems.
Therefore, it is necessary to have an autonomous system that can monitor them
in order to prevent emergent situation in advance. In this paper, we present a
wireless sensor network system that can recognize human behavioral patterns of
the elderly who lives alone. We model episodes that are series of events for a
person who lives in an one-bedroom apartment. We propose data cleaning
techniques in both sensor and base station sides for the erroneous environment
of wireless sensor networks. Based on these techniques, we try to extract
discrete events as close as possible to effective events. We introduce non-real
time analysis to recognize human behavioral patterns on the centralized system,
which can be further extended to a real-time analysis. We also adopt an
existing search technique to apply it to detect similar or abnormal behavior.
We experiment the proposed system by gathering behavioral pattern data from the
miniature one-bedroom apartment that is equipped with SunSPOTs in our HERACLEIA
Laboratory. We look up the resulting episodes from our experiment in the
dictionary that is a set of predetermined episodes using the suggested
algorithm. Keywords: assisted living environment, data cleaning, human behavior detection, search
episodes | |||
| Providing QoS in ontology centered context aware pervasive systems | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 8 | |
| Roman Arora; Vangelis Metsis; Rong Zhang; Fillia Makedon | |||
| There has been significant research in adapting the Semantic Web
technologies to create flexible context aware pervasive systems to enhance
fields such as assisted living or smart environments. Several ontology based
techniques have been proposed to simplify modeling knowledge and its
relationships, and several ontology centered middleware tools are currently
being developed to provide flexible and viable solutions for application
developers. However, middleware built on the basis of Semantic Web generally
suffers from drawbacks in performance, which limits its practical applications
in the real world. This paper proposes a framework to facilitate Quality of
Service (QoS) in ontology centered context aware pervasive middleware. Our
approach suggests that context-aware middleware that operate by contracting
mutual agreements with the client applications and provide controls over the
amount of data to be processed by them can achieve predictable performance and
response times. We also propose a service contract scheme that allows both
client applications and middleware to participate in the decisions regarding
the necessary data transformations required by the different system components
in order to improve the overall system performance. Keywords: context aware applications, middleware, pervasive computing,
quality-of-service (QoS) | |||
| ODM-based architecture for the development of mobile context-aware applications | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 9 | |
| Samyr Vale; Slimane Hammoudi | |||
| The development of context-aware applications makes face to many challenges.
These applications must take into account context definition, representation,
interpretation and reuse. Most ubiquitous applications focus on the development
of legacy artifacts or ad hoc architectures to capture and to adapt context
into business logics. There is no pattern for context-aware development. In
this paper, we present an ODM-based Architecture for the Development of Mobile
Context-aware Applications. ODM (Ontology Definition Metamodel) is the OMG
proposition for the development of ontologies founded on the concepts of the
Model Driven Engineering. Our architecture provides the development of
context-aware activities and business logic in independent and individual
models and on different abstraction levels. We also present in this paper a
well-defined context and context-aware metamodels with the current elements in
mobile environments. Keywords: context-awareness, metamodel, ontology, transformation | |||
| Towards an intelligent and supportive environment for people with physical or cognitive restrictions | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 10 | |
| Julio Abascal; Borja Bonail; Roberto Casas; Álvaro Marco; José Luis Sevillano; Daniel Cascado | |||
| AmbienNet environment has been developed with the aim of demonstrating the
feasibility of accessible intelligent environments designed to support people
with disabilities and older persons living independently. Its main purpose is
to examine in depth the advantages and disadvantages of pervasive supporting
systems based on the paradigm of Ambient Intelligence for people with sensory,
physical or cognitive limitations. Hence diverse supporting technologies and
applications have been designed in order to test their accessibility, ease of
use and validity. This paper presents the architecture of AmbienNet intelligent
environment and an intelligent application to support indoors navigation for
smart wheelchairs designed for validation purposes. Keywords: ambient intelligence, ambient supported living, smart homes | |||
| Human-robot team dynamic performance in assisted living environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 11 | |
| Alan Bowling; Eric Olson | |||
| In this work it is assumed that some interaction must occur when introducing
robots into an environment for the purpose of assisting humans. This
interaction may take several forms, but the one considered here is following,
which means the robot(s) should follow the human. The robot should maintain
some distance but keep him/her in its line of sight to prevent losing the
target. In a human environment, this is a challenging task due to the corners
or doorways that a human may disappear through or around. Here, the task of
maintaining a line of sight to the human while turning a corner is modeled as a
rotation of the human-robot team, in order to determine the performance
requirements for the robots. The development of a description for a team
rotation is the key element in the proposed work. The methodology is
illustrated using omnidirectional robots with mass, inertia, and actuator
limitations. Keywords: dynamic performance, human-robot interaction, mobility | |||
| Dynamic service composition in ubiquitous environment | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 12 | |
| Yun-Young Hwang; Kyu-Chul Lee | |||
| Service Component Architecture (SCA) defines how to create components and
how to combine those components into complete applications. SCA defines a
general approach to doing both of these things at design time of applications.
In ubiquitous, we consider dynamic factors such as frequently movement of user
or device location and change of service status. SCA does not consider about
that, but this specification proposed good solution about service composition.
For this reason, we suggested the service composition approach, which is
extended of SCA. Our approach supports dynamic service composition, which is
considered the dynamic factors of ubiquitous environment. In addition, it
reflects the user requirement like that what kind of service to do in what
order. It also supports coordination of service when the client can no longer
use the service because it is putted off the power or has another problem. Keywords: dynamic service composition, service oriented architecture and service
component architecture | |||
| UbiSmartWheel: a ubiquitous system with unobtrusive services embedded on a wheelchair | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 13 | |
| Octavian Postolache; Rui Neves Madeira; Nuno Correia; Pedro Silva Girão | |||
| Ubiquitous Computing has the main goal of building computing systems that
support and facilitate the daily lives of users, but being the least intrusive
possible. There are many technological advances reported in literature, but the
current scenario is still far away from an everyday life fulfilled with
ubiquitous systems. The main objective of this work is to present a pervasive
biomedical assistive environment for the elderly, with a wheelchair as a smart
object. The wheelchair includes embedded sensors to measure physiological
parameters such as heart rate and respiratory rate, mechanical quantities such
acceleration. A LF RFID reader is associated with in order to assure the
wheelchair user identification and wheelchair trajectory estimation considering
different RFID tags that are distributed on the floor. Based on the implemented
RFID system accompanying persons of the wheelchair's user are identified too. A
generic architecture was designed to implement this kind of computing
infrastructure in any physical space, like a home for elderly. It takes into
account the distribution of the system by the various entities in the
environment, which are users (elderly, watcher, and clinic), objects (e.g., the
wheelchair) and situated displays. Keywords: RFID, assistive technology, ballistocardiography, elderly, smart spaces,
ubiquitous computing, unobtrusive sensors | |||
| Emergency incidents detection in assisted living environments utilizing sound and visual perceptual components | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 14 | |
| Charalampos Doukas; Ilias Maglogiannis; Aggelos Rouskas; Aristodimos Pneumatikakis | |||
| The paper presents the concept and an initial implementation of a patient
status awareness system that may be used for patient activity interpretation
and emergency recognition in cases like elder falls. The system utilizes audio
and video data captured from the patient's environment. Visual information is
acquired using overhead cameras and audio data is collected from microphone
arrays. Proper audio data processing allows the detection of sounds related to
body falls or distress speech expressions. Appropriate tracking techniques are
applied to the visual perceptual component enabling the trajectory tracking of
the subjects. Sound directionality in conjunction to trajectory information and
subject's visual location can verify fall and indicate an emergency event. Post
fall visual behavior of the subject indicates the severity of the fall (e.g.,
if patient remains unconscious or patient recovers). A number of advanced
classification techniques have been evaluated using the latter perceptual
components. The performance of the classifiers has been assessed in terms of
accuracy and efficiency and results are presented. Keywords: assisted living environments, event detection, visual and audio
classification | |||
| Communicating through gestures without visual feedback | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 15 | |
| Irene Sturm; Maria Schiewe; Wiebke Köhlmann; Helmut Jürgensen | |||
| Human-machine interaction by gestures helps to improve communication: it
utilizes means of communication which are common to humans but alien to
machines. We consider ergonomic, functional and semantic issues in
gesture-based interfaces without visual feedback. Such situations arise with
the unobtrusive usage of wearable devices but, more importantly, with
interfaces for visually impaired persons. We consider the latter scenario --
that of blind users -- in view of forthcoming haptic interface technology and
investigate properties of gestural interaction models. Keywords: gestural interaction, haptics, nonvisual communication, visually impaired | |||
| Towards automated large vocabulary gesture search | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 16 | |
| Alexandra Stefan; Haijing Wang; Vassilis Athitsos | |||
| This paper describes work towards designing a computer vision system for
helping users look up the meaning of a sign. Sign lookup is treated as a video
database retrieval problem. A video database is utilized that contains one or
more video examples for each sign, for a large number of signs (close to 1000
in our current experiments). The emphasis of this paper is on evaluating the
trade-offs between a non-automated approach, where the user manually specifies
hand locations in the input video, and a fully automated approach, where hand
locations are determined using a computer vision module, thus introducing
inaccuracies into the sign retrieval process. We experimentally evaluate both
approaches and present their respective advantages and disadvantages. Keywords: ASL recognition, American Sign Language recognition, gesture recognition,
video indexing | |||
| Event-based experiments in an assistive environment using wireless sensor networks and voice recognition | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 17 | |
| Eric Becker; Zhengyi Le; Kyungseo Park; Yong Lin; Fillia Makedon | |||
| As the population is aging, more and more people require additional health
care, either at home, in the work place or in a nursing facility. Now, a need
exists for health monitoring outside of hospital conditions. These new
conditions make this technology of interest for developing health care
monitoring systems that can be deployed in many different environments,
including the home. Other systems in development employ a wide range of
different sensors, including cameras, and recording the information for
processing. These systems all involve using an apartment environment seeded
with sensors for detecting human behavior and activities. While these systems
are embedded in assistive environments, they do not have a comprehensive
approach to describe events, or handle a general and rapid deployment into
different configurations using wireless technology. In this paper, we are
presenting our ongoing project of deploying sensors into an assistive
environment. We currently are using SunSPOT sensor motes, where each one has
been programmed for a specific role based on rules describing events. In
addition, we are developing a voice recognition system for reaction to human
input in the same environment. Our system can be rapidly deployed without
requiring additional wiring or unwanted intrusion into the human patient's
life. Keywords: assistive environments, pervasive computing, robotics, wireless sensor
networks | |||
| EOG signal processing and analysis for controlling computer by eye movements | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 18 | |
| B. Estrany; P. Fuster; A. Garcia; Y. Luo | |||
| We have successfully designed and built a human computer interface system to
interface with the computer by human eye EOG signal (Electrooculography). The
EOG signal has very low voltage and very sensitive to interference. This paper
introduces the software we developed for processing the EOG signal which lead
to a reliable human computer interface by eye movements. Keywords: EOG (electrooculography), eye movement tracking, human-computer interaction,
software | |||
| Managing context evolution in pervasive environments | | BIBA | Full-Text | 19 | |
| Goce Trajcevski; Peter Scheuermann | |||
| In this work we address the problem of managing the evolution of different context dimensions in context-aware pervasive environments. We postulate that, in addition to the correlation of different observed/measured values from different sensors, the reaction to a particular event may need to have proactive consequences, in the sense of focusing on monitoring activities in different locations, that previously were of no interest. Towards that end, we argue that a modification of the triggers used in the Active Databases, may provide a paradigm that caters the desired awareness. | |||
| Identifying people in camera networks using wearable accelerometers | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 20 | |
| Thiago Teixeira; Deokwoo Jung; Gershon Dublon; Andreas Savvides | |||
| We propose a system to identify people in a sensor network. The system fuses
motion information measured from wearable accelerometer nodes with motion
traces of each person detected by a camera node. This allows people to be
uniquely identified with the IDs the accelerometer-node that they wear, while
their positions are measured using the cameras. The system can run in real
time, with high precision and recall results. A prototype implementation using
iMote2s with camera boards and wearable TI EZ430 nodes with accelerometer
sensorboards is also described. Keywords: association problem, consistent labelling, unique identification | |||
| A mobile rehabilitation application for the remote monitoring of cardiac patients after a heart attack or a coronary bypass surgery | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 21 | |
| Valérie Gay; Peter Leijdekkers; Edward Barin | |||
| This paper describes a personalised rehabilitation application using a smart
phone (PDA) and wireless (bio) sensors. It instructs and motivates patients to
follow their exercise programme and keeps track of their progress. It also
monitors the relevant biosignals and provides immediate feedback to the
patient.
Sensors transmit data to the mobile phone where it is analysed locally and the data can also be instantaneously transmitted to a healthcare centre for remote monitoring by a health professional. The rehabilitation application is personalised for each cardiac patient and provides tailored advice (e.g. exercise more, slow down). A trial with a rehabilitation centre is in progress in which we investigate whether the personalised rehabilitation application improves the success of the rehabilitation programme in terms of patient compliance with recommended life style changes (such as increase physical activity or lose weight) and whether use of the system brings peace of mind to cardiac patients. Keywords: cardiac rehabilitation, remote monitoring | |||
| Ubiquitous wireless infrastructure for elderly care | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 22 | |
| Muid Mufti; Dimitris Agouridis; Sami ud Din; Adeel Mukhtar | |||
| Monitoring and ensuring the well being of elderly citizen has become an
important part of our social care network. Many technologies have been
successfully deployed for collecting vital health statistics of elderly and
disabled people. We propose a hierarchical pervasive wireless infrastructure
for in home care of elderly people. The core wireless sensor network is based
on inexpensive transceivers operating in 915 MHz ISM band The connectivity with
the monitoring and response centers is deployed using redundant range WiMAX
links along with redundant multihop WiFi network. Successful test deployment
has shown feasibility of this methodology in many areas beyond in home care of
elderly and disables. Keywords: WiFi network, WiMAX links, elderly care, remote assistance system (RAS),
wireless sensor network | |||
| The application of a physical activity and location measurement system to public health interventions to promote physical activity | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 23 | |
| G. MacLellan; L. Baillie; M. Granat | |||
| At least 60% of the world's population is not sufficiently active to benefit
their health. This can be attributed in part to reduced participation in active
leisure pursuits, and an increase in sedentary behavior in the workplace.
Another key factor is that walking has declined in recent decades and this is
thought to be due to an increase in car use and layout of urban environments
which are dominated by cars and so do not appeal to pedestrians [4]. Other
aspects of the local environment such as availability of parks and other
recreation facilities, land use and transport system can also have a
discouraging or alternatively an encouraging influence on walking and other
forms of physical activity [6].
As local environment and travel patterns strongly influence physical activity, location context can be a valuable additional source of information when analyzing activity levels and activity patterns. The system described in this paper measures concurrent physical activity and location (GPS) and uses this data to produce measures relating to the following two areas: * Physical activity at different locations * Travel (walking and motorized transport) Information produced is designed to identify: * Changes in activity levels (general and within certain locations) * Scope for increased activity in particular settings * Amount, frequency and intensity of walking and its contribution to travel * Potential barriers to physical activity. This can inform individuals of their physical activity levels and provide quantifiable outcomes on the impact of interventions to increase physical activity. Keywords: accelerometer, global positioning system (GPS), health, measurement,
physical activity, travel | |||
| A scheme for on-site service provision in pervasive assistive environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 24 | |
| G. Pantziou; P. Belsis; D. Gavalas; C. Konstantopoulos; B. Mamalis | |||
| Remote healthcare monitoring and on demand provision of support attracts a
lot of interest due to the ability to provide assistance to elderly and
patients when needed; thus on one side the hospitals demand less personnel to
be engaged in monitoring patients, whereas on the other side the patient does
not need to remain hospitalized unless there is need to. Wireless and wearable
devices enable the constant monitoring of vital parameters; with the aid of
appropriate infrastructures they can be sent to the hospital and when it is
needed help can be sent at home. As the number of remotely monitored patients
grows, there is a need for efficient management of emergency messages
originating from portable and wearable devices as well as a demand for an
efficient management scheme for mobile units, which provide help at home or
transfer patients to the hospital. We present an architecture that enables
provision of help at home with wearable devices and wireless transmission
methods. Our approach also focuses on providing help at home in an efficient
manner minimizing the service time while maintaining high availability for the
high priority calls. We present an algorithm that enables the management of
prioritized messages and manages the mobile units providing assistance at home
in an efficient manner. Keywords: assistance at home, medical information systems, mobile k-server problem,
remote healthcare monitoring | |||
| Zombee: a home automation prototype for retrofitted environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 25 | |
| Dacian Tudor; Andrei Stancovici; Bogdan Popescu; Vladimir Cretu; Gernot Reisinger | |||
| As home automation systems become more and more present, we propose a new
solution by addressing some of the shortcomings of current solutions. We are
developing an open system specially built for existing environments which need
flexible automation functionalities. Our solution has the advantage of seamless
integration in the existing home structure without important changes such as
wiring when installing our system. The system is easy to operate and offers
great flexibility in regular monitoring and controlling home automation tasks.
Zombee brings a new approach by supporting the user to create complex
automation programs, which are orchestrating device interactions tailored to
the user's needs. These programs are run in background without any assistance
from the user. In this manner, the user sets its own use-cases and can change
the behavior of the system programmatically. Keywords: ZigBee, home automation, wireless communications | |||
| Assistive technologies for use in the home to prolong independence | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 26 | |
| Kathryn Daniel; Carolyn L. Cason; Sherry Ferrell | |||
| In this paper, we describe applications of computing assisted technology to
home environments of elderly persons. Keywords: aging, assistive technology for persons with disabilities, computers and
society, gerotechnology, human safety, social issues | |||
| Experiencing NFC-based touch for home healthcare | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 27 | |
| Rosa Iglesias; Jorge Parra; Cristina Cruces; Nuria Gómez de Segura | |||
| Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) aims to enhance quality of life of elder and
impaired people. Thanks to the advances in Information and Communication
Technology (ICT) and medical technologies, it is now possible to support new
home healthcare services to improve their quality of life. In particular, Near
Field Communication Technology (NFC) seems to play an important role in elderly
homecare.
In this paper, a health monitoring system is shown where users can identify themselves by simple touch with an NFC-enabled device and different health information can be wirelessly collected and associated with the identified user. Furthermore, this system enables caregivers or physicians to monitor these health readings and patient actions at home. This system was tested with 17 users that led us to a better understanding of usability and effectiveness of this health system and user needs, and showed their preferences for a certain NFC-enabled device to be used in user identification. Keywords: ambient assisted living, elderly people, healthcare, near field
communication | |||
| A mediation framework for achieving interoperability in pervasive grid-based homecare systems | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 28 | |
| V. Koufi; F. Malamateniou; G. Vassilacopoulos | |||
| Healthcare is an increasingly collaborative enterprise involving many
individuals and organizations that coordinate their efforts toward promoting
quality and efficient delivery of healthcare. In cases where healthcare
delivery is intended to be provided at patients' homes, the delivery process
can be facilitated through the use of pervasive homecare systems. In such
systems, interoperability is highly demanded in all the levels including the
service and data levels. This paper presents a mediator-based approach for
achieving interoperability in pervasive process-based healthcare systems built
on a Grid infrastructure. The system's architecture is based on a Grid
infrastructure upon which healthcare processes are automated using the Business
Process Execution Language (BPEL). Client applications are portal-based,
operate on mobile devices and can use radio frequency identification (RFID)
technology for wireless capture of identification data. The proposed mediation
framework enables decoupling of the healthcare processes and the underlying
Grid middleware infrastructures. In particular, it resolves issues raised by
both the diversity of the middleware infrastructures and the diversity of data
formats and semantics used in the databases exposed by Grid middleware
services. The framework is built on a software platform that exploits agent and
workflow technology, thus providing robustness, high flexibility and fault
tolerance in an environment as dynamic and heterogeneous as healthcare. Keywords: business process execution language, grid portal application,
interoperability, software agents, workflow systems | |||
| Privacy and resource protection in personal network federations | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 29 | |
| Ch. Z. Patrikakis; D. M. Kyriazanos; A. S. Voulodimos; I. G. Nikolakopoulos | |||
| The emerging need for peer to peer communication in multi-user environments
as well as the breakthrough of ubiquitous computing have contributed to the
evolution of Personal Networking towards multiple network collaboration, namely
the Personal Networks Federations. Nevertheless, in these environments new
threat issues arise, calling for appropriate countermeasures. In this paper,
the authors propose a framework for privacy protection in personal networking,
based on the idea of creating a trust management mechanism that will meet the
need for protecting privacy and safeguarding sensitive and personal
information, while satisfying the need for validating and authorizing users
that have access to personal resources. Keywords: personal networks, privacy, security, threat analysis | |||
| Strong mobile device protection from loss and capture | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 30 | |
| Zhengyi Le; Matt Bishop; Fillia Makedon | |||
| Assistive environments employ multiple types of devices to monitor human
actions and identify critical events for physical safety. Some of the devices
must be wireless in order to be nonintrusive. This introduces the problem of
authenticating these devices and building secure communication channels among
them. The traditional way is to assign a private key to a device for digital
identification. In this paper, we present an approach to protect the private
key by introducing a third party and bilaterally and proactively generating a
random number to refresh key shares based on Bellare and Miner's forward secure
signature scheme. This improves the resilient mediated RSA solution because the
entire private key is also updated periodically. In this way, if an attacker
steals one key share, he only can use it for a limited period of time because
it will be obsolete immediately after the next refresh operation. Even if he
compromises both key shares simultaneously, the digital signatures generated by
previous private keys are still secure. Our scheme is proven to be intrusion
resilient based on the CDH assumption in the random oracle model. The
construction is also quite efficient. Keywords: assistive environment, authentication, digital signature, forward security,
mobile device | |||
| SketchML a representation language for novel sketch recognition approach | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 31 | |
| Danilo Avola; Andrea Del Buono; Giorgio Gianforme; Stefano Paolozzi; Rui Wang | |||
| Multimodal interfaces can be profitably used to support increasingly complex
services in assistive environments. In particular, sketch-based interfaces
offer users an effortless and powerful communication way to represent concepts
and commands on different devices. Unlike other modalities, sketch-based
interaction can be easily fitted according to heterogeneous services. Moreover
it can be quickly personalized according to the user needs.
Developing a sketch-based interface for a specific service is a time-consuming operation that requires the re-engineering and/or the re-designing of the whole recognizer framework. This paper describes a definitive framework by which the user, simply by using freehand drawing, can define every kind of sketch-based interface. The definition of the interface and its recognition process are performed by using our developed Sketch Modeling Language (SketchML). Keywords: SVG, XML, multi-domain, segmentation, sketch recognition, sketch-based
interaction, sketch-based interfaces, vectorization | |||
| Ubi-designer: a web-based toolkit for configuring and field-testing UbiComp prototypes | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 32 | |
| Martijn H. Vastenburg; Halldór Fjalldal; Charles van der Mast | |||
| Technology is now available for creating affordable sensor networks and
infrastructures for ubiquitous computing environments. In the area of ambient
assisted living, context-awareness is considered to be a key factor towards
creating acceptable solutions that support elderly people in living
independently in their homes as long as possible. Unfortunately, at the present
state of technology, the design of context-aware products and services requires
substantial technical knowledge. Consequently, product designers are often
dependent on engineers for implementing prototypes and consequently prototyping
their design concepts is a costly and time-consuming process. This paper
presents a web-based toolkit that supports product designers in prototyping and
configuring interactive context-aware services in multiple homes. The toolkit
has been designed and tested in close collaboration with interaction designers.
Using the toolkit, designers can make fast design iterations and eventually
lower development cost. Keywords: context-aware products and services, design, prototyping, toolkits,
ubiquitous computing | |||
| 3DE: selective cluster head selection scheme for energy efficiency in wireless sensor networks | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 33 | |
| Jinsu Kim; Junghyun Lee; Keewook Rim | |||
| The traditional cluster-based routing method is a typical method for
enhancing an energy efficiency, which selects cluster head in order to send the
aggregated data arriving from the nodes in cluster to a sink. However, caused
by the frequent information exchange between selected cluster head and nodes of
cluster in setup phase of the cluster formation and direct transmission between
isolated nodes which are excluded from the all clusters and sink in
steady-state phase, it is necessary to minimize the unnecessary energy
dissipation using the equal distribution of cluster heads. We propose an
efficient cluster-based routing scheme, called 3DE. In order to configure the
optimum distribution of cluster, 3DE selects new cluster head using the
information such as direction obtained from upper level cluster head, distance
among nodes in the cluster, residual energy and density. Thus this study
prolongs the network lifetime and provides equal opportunity for being cluster
head. Keywords: cluster head selection, cluster-based routing, sleep mode, wireless sensor
networks | |||
| Energy-efficient routing protocols in wireless sensor networks for health communication systems | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 34 | |
| Nikolaos A. Pantazis; Stefanos A. Nikolidakis; Dimitrios D. Vergados | |||
| Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have their own unique nature of distributed
resources and dynamic topology. This introduces very special requirements that
should be met by the proposed routing protocols for the WSNs. A Wireless Sensor
Network routing protocol is a standard which controls the number of nodes that
come to an agreement about the way to route packets between all the computing
devices in mobile wireless networks. Today, wireless networks are becoming
popular and many routing protocols have been proposed in the literature.
Considering these protocols we made a survey on the WSNs energy-efficient
routing techniques which are used for Health Care Communication Systems
concerning especially the Flat Networks Protocols that have been developed in
recent years. Then, as related work, we discuss each of the routing protocols
belonging to this category and conclude with a comparison of them. Keywords: flat networks protocols, routing protocols, sensor nodes, wireless sensor
networks | |||
| Random sampling key revocation scheme for distributed sensor networks | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 35 | |
| Yuan Xue; Helmut Jürgensen | |||
| Distributed key or node revocation facilitates the removal of compromised
keys or nodes from a network without requiring a central authority. We propose
a new revocation scheme, the random neighbourhood sampling node revocation, for
distributed sensor networks. Our protocol is based on simple random sampling, a
statistical method to estimate the property of the population through randomly
sampling a minimal subset of the population. We exploit one of the inherent
features of sensor networks: the sensor nodes are densely deployed, and there
is a large overlap of the (wireless) coverage areas of any two neighbouring
nodes. The revocation decision is made collectively by the neighbours of a
suspicious node. However, instead of collecting the opinions of all neighbours
of a suspicious node our scheme samples random subsets of the set of all its
neighbours and of the node, which issued the warning. Our protocol is fully
decentralized, incurs low communication cost, enables fast reaction to a
detected intrusion, is false-detection tolerant and can be implemented with any
pairwise key distribution scheme. Keywords: key management, key revocation, privacy, security, sensor nets | |||
| Automatic sensor placement in a 3D volume | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 36 | |
| Eric Becker; Gutemberg Guerra-Filho; Fillia Makedon | |||
| Given a 3D environment, a set of constraints, and a set of sensor models,
this paper addresses the problem of finding the set of sensors and their
corresponding placement that covers a target space in the environment. The set
of possible sensors is represented in a parametric space associated with the
sensor's pose. Initially, the target space is discretized as a set of space
elements. A voting scheme builds an accumulator array where each space element
votes for all sensors that may observe it while satisfying the perceptual
constraints. A heuristic selects the best set of cameras that covers the target
space. We present experimental results with synthetic and realistic 3D models. Keywords: sensor placement | |||
| A technological infrastructure design for a pediatric oncology network | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 37 | |
| Aniello Murano | |||
| In Italy, the service of Pediatric oncology is very centralized and granted
by high-specialized medical structures. In particular, in the Italian Regione
Campania there are just few of such medical centers that, in case of room
availability, take care of the child from the diagnosis until his/her complete
healing, providing all necessary treatments along with a number of assistance
services both for the patient and his parents. Regione Campania centers are
often congested, causing a migration of more than 35% of the young patients
towards extraterritorial centers. Also, these medical centers are often far
away from the place where the patients leave, forcing them to have recurrently
long traveling, sometimes just for a routine test. However, in the Regione
Campania there are a lot of facilities and hospitals with high technology
equipments and qualified staff that, by means of an appropriate network
organization based on a computer network infrastructure, could help during the
children's protocol treatment and thus significantly contribute to improve the
local and national pediatric oncology service.
This paper reports an evaluation research for the development, through an engineering approach based on a "hub and spoke" model, of a complete and efficient information system that allows the organization and sharing, at different levels, of clinical information among high-specialized medical centers and the other entities. Keywords: e-health, hub and spoke, information system, medical, modern hospital,
pediatric oncology, technological innovation | |||
| Non-interrupting user interfaces for electronic body-worn swim devices | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 38 | |
| Kilian Förster; Marc Bächlin; Gerhard Tröster | |||
| We evaluate three different non-interrupting user interfaces that give
feedback to a swimmer while swimming. We designed three interfaces for audio,
visual and haptic feedback. These three systems were used in an experiment to
give commands to a swimmer. The recognition rate and the reaction time for each
modality was determined.
The systems do not restrict the users in their swim movements. For the visual and the haptic interfaces the results are promising as 70%-100% of the triggered events were recognized correctly. The reaction time of the subjects was in the range of 1.25 to 2.25 seconds. With the audio feedback we achieved less than 70% of recognized events and a reaction time about twice as long as for the visual or haptic feedback. The audio feedback is therefore not appropriate while swimming. Keywords: feedback, sports, swimming, user interface | |||
| A multimodal pervasive framework for ambient assisted living | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 39 | |
| Alessia D'Andrea; Arianna D'Ulizia; Fernando Ferri; Patrizia Grifoni | |||
| The increasing need to access information everywhere and at any time leads
us to believe that future user interfaces, through which users interact with
pervasive computing systems, must address both device and modality
independence. The pervasive computing paradigm sees almost every object in the
everyday environment as a system able to communicate with users and other
systems in their own languages. The interaction between users and systems is
therefore typically multimodal. The main challenge of multimodal interaction,
that is also the main topic of this paper, lies in developing a framework that
is able to process information derived from whatever input modalities, giving
these inputs an appropriate representation and integrating these individual
representations into a joint semantic interpretation. A description of this
multimodal pervasive framework will be given in this paper, along with some
details of its application in Ambient Assisted Living and the usability test
that was implemented to validate its effectiveness. Keywords: ambient assisted living, framework architecture, multimodal languages,
pervasive systems | |||
| Pervasive computing and disability: designing for independence? | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 40 | |
| Pam Briggs; Linda Little | |||
| In order to introduce disabled users to the ideas underpinning pervasive
technologies, three filmed scenarios were created to illustrate near-future
interactions in health, commerce and e-voting domains. These filmed scenarios
were used in a focus group session with fourteen participants who had either a
visual or auditory impairment. Participants were asked to comment on the
scenarios and reflect on the costs and benefits of such technologies. The
resultant data was coded in terms of general and disability-specific concerns.
Particular issues were raised about the need for disabled individuals to
delegate certain tasks to trusted others. Keywords: disability, identity, pervasive technology, privacy, trust, ubiquitous
computing | |||
| Towards a social fabric for pervasive assistive environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 41 | |
| Clare Owens; David E. Millard; Andrew Stanford-Clark | |||
| The digital divide refers to a lack of technological access, part of which
involves exclusion from a blooming arena of social interaction. People without
mobile phones or PCs cannot access email, SMS or social networking websites;
this includes many groups, such as the elderly, who can become vulnerable
without good social contact. By enabling multimodal access to a variety of
communication channels, including ubiquitous ones such as televisions and home
telephones, this set of people can be included in such interactions. This paper
describes a prototype pervasive messaging infrastructure for multimodal
communications, and how it can be used as an assistive environment. Our
eventual aim is to create a social fabric, a pervasive infrastructure layer to
support more complex social experiences in the future. Keywords: ambient social experiences, messaging, multimodal communication | |||
| More than user-friendly I/O devices | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 42 | |
| Jan Smrz | |||
| Designing a communication device that is to be used with direct human
interaction is a complex task. Hardware designer has to meet both the
requirements of potential users (human side) and the requirements of
programmers (software side). Selecting from a variety of interfaces and
protocols and optimizing the technical part of the new device is definitely not
enough. The main goal of every designer is to make their products acceptable
for users. This article introduces a set of criteria that should be considered
to fulfil the needs of users and provides an overview of technologies and their
features from that point of view. The combination of being user-friendly,
multiplatform, developer-accessible, self-installing or even simple or
aestethic is very difficult to achieve, but it is possible as shown in this
paper. Keywords: HID, I/O devices, USB, multiplatform, self installation, user-friendly | |||
| User-centered design for supporting the self-management of chronic illnesses: an interdisciplinary approach | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 43 | |
| Silvia Torsi; Nasrin Nasr; Peter C. Wright; Sue J. Mawson; Gail A. Mountain | |||
| This paper describes an interdisciplinary, user-centered approach to the
design of healthcare technologies, involving clinicians, therapists,
developers, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Health and Social Care
researchers. Our starting point has been to understand patients' experiences of
becoming ill through a series of focus groups with health professionals,
patients and their carers. We used the metaphor of illness as a journey to
capture those experiences. We have also reviewed data in the public domain
(http://www.healthtalkonline.org). We have employed a theoretical framework
which combines concepts from Activity Theory and other social sciences
approaches to model illnesses. We outlined a set of design concepts for the
design of the SMART 2 system which are emerging from our analysis of the
patient experience. Keywords: SMART 2, chronic illnesses, health and social care, human-computer
interaction, self-management, service design, user experience design,
user-centered design | |||
| 'Senior moments': loss and context | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 44 | |
| Stefan P. Carmien; Francesca I. Cavallaro; Randal A. Koene | |||
| Everyone occasionally experiences momentary confusion about the intent of an
action in the midst of doing an ordinary task ("Why did I come into this
room?"). As we age, these momentary confusions, referred to here by the
colloquial term senior moments become more frequent. Lapses of this sort can
also be the result of specific cognitive degeneration associated with aging and
can have an impact on day-to-day living that ranges from annoying to
incapacitating. This paper discusses the current understanding of senior
moments in relation to cognitive decline and depicts scenarios depicting
typical instances of them and common sense techniques to repair the memory
slips. We present a discussion of the challenges involved in the design of a
computationally based system for supporting lapse remediation, and specific
implementation issues involved in providing such a system. Keywords: aging and memory, assistive technology, cognitive disabilities, design
methodologies, independence | |||
| Activity monitoring by fusion of optical and mechanical tracking technologies for user behavior analysis | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 45 | |
| Gerald Bieber; Andre Hoffmeyer; Enrico Gutzeit; Christian Peter; Bodo Urban | |||
| Patient monitoring by camera surveillance within the private surrounding
suffers on privacy issues as well as high requirements on sensor technology and
infrastructure. Because of those limitations there is not much knowledge on
user activities and behavior in the home environment. In this paper we
introduce a novel concept of local activity monitoring using a very slim
infrastructure. The required technical environment consists only of a
Wi-Fi-Webcam and a mobile phone. With a bi-modal sensor fusion approach we
improve the optical activity monitoring by inclusion of electromechanical
movement sensors data taken from a mobile phone. The fusion of data from
cameras and mobile acceleration sensors allow for a comprehensive, non
obtrusive observation of people which can be used for behavior analysis,
reactive assistance and support, and natural interfaces especially for the
elderly. Keywords: DiaTrace, acceleration sensor, activity monitoring, activity recognition,
ambient custom care, assistive technologies, mobile motion tracking, sensor
fusion, user behavior analysis, user state detection | |||
| Ageing in a networked society: social inclusion and mental stimulation | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 46 | |
| John A. Waterworth; Soledad Ballesteros; Christian Peter; Gerald Bieber; Andreas Kreiner; Andreas Wiratanaya; Lazaros Polymenakos; Sophia Wanche-Politis; Michele Capobianco; Igone Etxeberria; Louise Lundholm | |||
| Research into ageing and cognition has demonstrated the close relationship
of sensory functioning and social communication to maintaining cognitive
performance and mood in the elderly, yet in modern societies elderly people are
increasingly isolated and under-stimulated, both physically and
psycho-socially. This situation results in accelerated cognitive decline and
the suffering associated with loneliness and confusion. Health services cannot
keep up with the demand for home visits and day care centres that can alleviate
this problem. Incorporating new healthcare technologies for proactive health
and elder care into everyday living environments can contribute significantly
to support the elderly and their carers and is to become a major priority over
the next decade. The approach followed in the AGNES project is to keep the
elderly mentally and socially stimulated and in contact with others by
combining state detection and social network technologies. This paper provides
some scientific background for the chosen approach and describes the
technological concept of the project. Keywords: AGNES, activity monitoring, affect, cognition, pervasive assistance, sensor
fusion, social network, user state detection | |||
| Ambient kitchen: designing situated services using a high fidelity prototyping environment | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 47 | |
| Patrick Olivier; Guangyou Xu; Andrew Monk; Jesse Hoey | |||
| The Ambient Kitchen is a high fidelity prototype for exploring the design of
pervasive computing algorithms and applications for everyday environments. The
environment integrates data projectors, cameras, RFID tags and readers, object
mounted accelerometers, and under-floor pressure sensing using a combination of
wired and wireless networks. The Ambient Kitchen is a lab-based replication of
a real kitchen where careful design has hidden the additional technology, and
allows both the evaluation of pervasive computing prototypes and the
simultaneous capture of the multiple synchronized streams of sensor data.
Previous work exploring the requirements for situated support for people with
cognitive impairments motivated the design of the physical and technical
infrastructure and we describe both our motivations and previous work on
interaction design in kitchen environments. Finally, we describe how our
lab-based prototype has been put to use as: a design tool for designers; a
design tool for users; an observatory to collect sensor data for activity
recognition algorithm development, and an evaluation test bed. The limitations
and advantages of lab-based, as opposed to in situ home-based testing, are
discussed. Keywords: kitchen tasks, multi-modal prompting, people with dementia, pervasive
computing, prompting, sensor networks assistance in daily activities,
ubiquitous computing | |||
| Design and prototype of a device to engage cognitively disabled older adults in visual artwork | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 48 | |
| Scott Blunsden; Brandi Richards; Jen Boger; Alex Mihailidis; Tom Bartindale; Dan Jackson; Patrick Olivier; Jesse Hoey | |||
| We investigate technological solutions for arts therapists who work with
older adults with cognitive disabilities, such as Alzheimer's disease. We
present ethnographic analysis of a survey of arts therapists in the UK and
Canada, and show how there is a need for devices that can be used to promote
autonomy and independence through engagement with creative visual arts. We then
demonstrate a novel device that uses a touch-screen interface, and artificial
intelligence software to monitor and interact with a user. Using a
probabilistic model, the device monitors the behaviours of a user as well as
aspects of their affective or internal state, including their responsiveness
and engagement with the device. The device then uses decision theoretic
reasoning to take situated actions that promote engagement from the user. We
show how the device fits with the ethnographic design, and we give a laboratory
demonstration of the functionality of the device. We present and discuss our
next steps with this device, including end user testing. Keywords: MDP, POMDP, art therapy, computer vision, face detection, partially
observable Markov decision process, touch screen | |||
| SmartDrawer: RFID-based smart medicine drawer for assistive environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 49 | |
| Eric Becker; Vangelis Metsis; Roman Arora; Jyothi Vinjumur; Yurong Xu; Fillia Makedon | |||
| Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an emerging technology, being used
in monitoring including healthcare. We apply different types of RFID tags to
monitor drug taking and its impact in an assistive environment. Compared to
other active Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs), RFID tags do not need a battery,
recharging, and so have no battery power loss problems. RFID tags are tiny in
volume, and can be embedded into different objects. This paper talks about an
RFID-based application in an assistive environment called "Smart Drawer", which
tracks medicine taking for the elderly. We investigate the hardware involved to
build such an application and we develop the software infrastructure to create
a functional system to assist patients and caregivers with the medication
procedures and also collect data for future use. Keywords: RFID, ambient intelligence, assistive environments, human activity, sensors,
smart furniture | |||
| Using the human body field as a medium for natural interaction | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 50 | |
| Andreas Braun; Pascal Hamisu | |||
| In this paper we present a novel technique for integration in assistive
environments, using capacitive proximity sensing to detect the presence of a
human body, thus creating a medium for natural, deliberate or unaware
interaction. As the world's population ages, we witness a growing number of
health-related issues and the need to simplify interaction with technologies
that are getting ever more complex. We present implementation of hardware and
software prototypes of this versatile and cheap technology that can be easily
and unobtrusively integrated into ambient assisted living environments. Keywords: filters and interaction techniques, fragments, human-centered computing,
proximity sensors | |||
| A portable medical unit for medical imaging telecollaboration | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 51 | |
| Ilias Sachpazidis; George Kontaxakis; Georgios Sakas | |||
| In this paper, we are going to introduce a multimodal portable medical
device for both medical imaging tele-collaboration and monitoring of vital
parameters. The introduced portable unit offers diversity of medical devices
and is in position to acquire ultrasound images, ECG 12 leads, and blood
pressure and be able to measure oxygen level in the blood. In addition, the
portable unit is equipped with all available telecommunication gateways (e.g.
GSM, UMTS, ISDN, DSL, Satellite) providing a great communication convenience to
the physicians utilizing XMMP instant messaging protocols. Keywords: DICOM, VITAL, imaging tool, tele-collaboration, telemedicine | |||
| A wireless system for monitoring of children with suspected cardiac arrhythmias | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 52 | |
| Efthyvoulos Kyriacou; Marios Pattichis; Kounoudes Anastasis; Constantinos Pattichis; Loukas Paraskeva; Antonis Jossif; Dimitris Hoplaros; Dimitris Vogiatzis | |||
| Arrhythmia is one of the most difficult problems in Cardiology and
especially in Pediatric Cardiology. In this study, we present a mobile health
(m-Health) system that will be used for continuous monitoring of children with
suspected cardiac arrhythmias. The system is able to do real-time acquisition
and transmission of ECG signals, and facilitate an alarm scheme able to
identify possible arrhythmias so as to notify the on-call doctor and the
relatives of the child that an event or something that denotes malfunction is
happening.
In general the problem has been divided into two cases. The first one, called "In-house case" the subject is located in his/her house. While for the second, called "Moving patient case" the subject might be located anywhere else. Our goal is the continuous 24 hours monitoring of the child. During the "In house case", a sensor network installed in the child's house will be used in order to continuously monitor ECG signals from the patient as well as environmental parameters. The second case is more general. For this case, the child will be monitored using the same ECG recording device but the signals will be transmitted, through a PDA device, directly to the central monitoring system. The transmission is performed through the use of 2.5G and 3G mobile communication networks. The system design, development and technical tests (using simulator) are finished. The next step will be the better verification of the system on healthy volunteers so as to get ready for application on patients. Keywords: children arrhythmias, home monitoring, mobile health, sensor networks,
wireless telemedicine | |||
| A wireless distributed framework for supporting assistive learning environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 53 | |
| C. Skourlas; P. Belsis; F. Sarinopoulou; A. Tsolakidis; D. Vassis; C. Marinagi | |||
| There is a lot of interest in developing environments utilizing various
types of assistive technologies lately. Among else, people with specific
difficulties may benefit from specially designed devices and software that aim
in overcoming the disabilities of various groups. We describe a framework that
aims in the provision of advanced services towards the facilitation of access
to information for specific groups of people. Among else, our approach uses
various tools and techniques. With wireless devices access to information is
achieved independently of location, while with personalized services there is a
capability to adjust the services and interfaces to various demands. Finally
with a specific methodology that has been developed and tested as a result of
international projects, the content and interfaces are adjusted to various
needs of the participating user-groups. Keywords: information retrieval, intelligent information systems | |||
| An auditory computer-based training for mild cognitive impairment and mild Alzheimer's disease: German prototype of the Brain Fitness program | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 54 | |
| V. M. Leirer; F. Glöckner; T. Elbert; I. T. Kolassa | |||
| Cognitive decline in aging has been associated with the combined effects of
diminishing functions of peripheral senses and diminished cognitive activation.
Both effects are associated with loss of neural adaptation and failure to
exploit the potential for neuroplastic adaptation. Consequently, reduced or
noisy processing, weakened neuromodulatory control and negative learning
actively degrade the brain's circuitry and functional architecture. Previous
attempts to prevent or delay cognitive decline in normal or pathological aging
focused on higher cognitive processes like mnemonic strategies. Cognitive
improvements were moderate and did not generalize to other cognitive domains.
In contrast, recent studies suggest that neuroplastic remodeling of
representational cortex in order to adjust to age-related alterations in
sensory fidelity might prevent and even reverse central degradation.
We describe the theoretical and scientific background of an innovative computer-based auditory discrimination training, which is based on the principles of cortical reorganization in order to renormalize functions degraded by noisy representations of sound and speech. Furthermore, we will illustrate the development of a German prototype and will give an outlook on a current study that evaluates the efficacy of this training program in attenuating or even reversing cognitive decline in people with mild cognitive impairment or mild Alzheimer's disease. Keywords: Alzheimer's disease, auditory computer-based training, improvement of
cognitive functioning, mild cognitive impairment, neuroplasticity | |||
| Involvement of elderly citizens as potential end users of assistive technologies in the living lab Schwechat | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 55 | |
| Walter Hlauschek; Paul Panek; Wolfgang L. Zagler | |||
| This paper describes the efforts of the city of Schwechat in creating a
local information society by supporting the Schwechat Living Lab for Ambient
Assisted Living (AAL) technologies and services. Local authorities, social
service providers, elderly persons, carers, research entities and companies
have started to cooperate closely as full partners in this Living Lab in order
to invent, discuss, explore, implement, and evaluate innovative technologies to
support the independent living of senior citizens. This approach allows
focusing on the actual needs of the future users by involving them right from
the beginning. The paper gives an overview on the approach of the AAL Living
Lab, it describes some projects currently being carried out and discusses the
experiences gathered since 2006. The findings in the Living Lab are promising,
especially the feedback from the user community is very positive. Keywords: AAL, ambient assisted living, assistive technologies, eHeatlth, embedded PC,
gait analysis, living lab, participative design, pervasive computing, smart
homes, usability, user involvement, video over IP, voice over IP | |||
| T-Seniority: an online service platform to assist independent living of elderly population | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 56 | |
| Vasiliki Moumtzi; Josefina Farinos; Christopher Wills | |||
| Nowadays, elderly people, particularly those of an elder age, are closely
linked with information for the independent living. This paper presents the
results of our investigation to address their needs and on web enabled
technologies which can be reached by all elderly people and can facilitate
their independent living. In the context of this research we examined already
existing platforms which provide e-services and selected the one which provide
a neutral, high quality infrastructure for product/service deployment and
testing. At the last stage, we propose our approach we intent to implement at
the selected platform in order to assist the addressed needs. Keywords: assisting living, e-services, elderly people, needs | |||
| An interpretive approach in the evaluation of homecare telematics interventions | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 57 | |
| Eleni Kaldoudi; Antonia Chatzopoulou; Vassilis Vargemezis | |||
| Homecare telematics can be regarded as one of the fastest growing healthcare
delivery sectors in the developed world and it is further reinforced as
healthcare delivery paradigm is shifting from doctor and hospital-centered
towards a new model where the citizen becomes responsible for the personalized
management of healthcare, delivered at the point of living whenever possible.
An important issue in the advancement and deployment of home telehealth
services is their assessment. This paper reviews various approaches in health
information systems evaluation and argues that home telehealth interventions
more than any other such information systems applications require a holistic,
interpretive approach in their evaluation, emphasizing the overall assessment
of the telehealth service seen as an information system embedded in a clinical
and a social context, rather than seen merely as a technical innovation or a
drug. The paper proposes an adopted framework for evaluating home telehealth
interventions and presents its application for the evaluation of a novel
telehealth service for the monitoring and support of peritoneal dialysis at
home. Keywords: evaluation, home care telematics, interpretivism, peritoneal dialysis,
telehealth, web services | |||
| Using affective avatars and rich multimedia content for education of children with autism | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 58 | |
| Evdokimos I. Konstantinidis; Magda Hitoglou-Antoniadou; Andrej Luneski; Panagiotis D. Bamidis; Maria M. Nikolaidou | |||
| Autism is a communication disorder that mandates early and continuous
educational interventions on various levels like the everyday social,
communication and reasoning skills. Computer-aided education has recently been
considered as a likely intervention method for such cases, and therefore
different systems have been proposed and developed worldwide. In more recent
years, affective computing applications for the aforementioned interventions
have also been proposed to shed light on this problem. In this paper, we
examine the technological and educational needs of affective interventions for
autistic persons. Enabling affective technologies are visited and a number of
possible exploitation scenarios are illustrated. Emphasis is placed in covering
the continuous and long term needs of those persons by unobtrusive and
ubiquitous technologies with the engagement of an affective speaking avatar. A
personalised prototype system facilitating these scenaria is described. Last
but not least, we examine the feedback educators for autistic persons provide
for the system in terms of its usefulness, efficiency and the envisaged
reaction of the autistic persons, which has been collected by means of an
anonymous questionnaire. Results illustrate the clear potential of this effort
in facilitating a very promising autism intervention. Keywords: affective computing, autism, avatars, computer-aided learning, emotions,
human-computer interaction | |||
| Description and future trends of ICT solutions offered towards independent living: the case of LLM project | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 59 | |
| Christos A. Frantzidis; Panagiotis D. Bamidis | |||
| Due to the increasing elderly population, healthcare systems able to promote
independent living are regarded as an emerging market. Despite the significant
advances aiming to support senior citizens, several issues have to be addressed
in order to enable older people to live independently and to form living cells
of our society. Aiming to contribute to the research of elderly care, this
paper reports the open issues that should be taken into consideration in order
to provide a technological solution towards Ambient Assistive Living (AAL).
After reviewing the most prominent European funded projects, it presents an
example of integrated elderly healthcare platform and finally attempts to
highlight the future trends which should be employed in order to face with
success the social and financial phenomenon of ageing population. Keywords: ageing, ambient assistive living, integrated ICT platform, mental health,
neurophysiology, skin conductance | |||
| An intelligent robotic assistive living system | | BIBA | Full-Text | 60 | |
| Ray Jarvis; Om Gupta; Sutono Effendi; Zhi Li | |||
| This paper describes an intelligent robotic system designed to operate in an assistive technology environment in the aid of elderly and disabled people at home or in a caring institution, to improve their quality of life, giving them more independence from humans for carrying out trivial tasks which, in turn, releases the human helpers to concentrate on the more nurturing aspects of care. Details of progress, to date, are provided. | |||
| ASIBOT assistive robot in a domestic environment | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 61 | |
| A. Jardón; J. C. González; M. Stoelen; S. Martínez; C. Balaguer | |||
| New mobile robotic devices are conquering homes. From automatic shades to
motorized vacuum cleaning units, advanced technologies are progressively being
introduced into real domestic home environments. Technology is no longer being
introduced to simply serve information or environmental control. Dynamic and
mobile elements are being introduced to perform "household chores" that require
dexterous manipulation and advanced sensing and reasoning. This is a huge
objective that implies great improvement and advances in current robotic
technologies related to anytime availability, safety, and user satisfaction.
From the point of view of dependability, the most complex part of a house is
the kitchen, attending to the number of static-fixed task devices (white
appliances). This is the proposed working scenario, to test the acceptance of a
new modular type of robotic aids for handicapped. The ASIBOT-based Domestic
Aided Kitchen is the adaptation of a handicapped-adapted kitchen for the
operation of the portable climbing robot ASIBOT. This paper presents the first
results of simulation of ASIBOT and derived synthesized models in a dynamic VR
model of the kitchen, and the current state of investigation for ASIBOT2 and
its full integration with the kitchen and user. Keywords: VR simulation, assistive robot, task-oriented design | |||
| Methodology for robot mapping and navigation in assisted living environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 62 | |
| Syed Atif Mehdi; Christopher Armbrust; Jan Koch; Karsten Berns | |||
| Robust navigation in living environments demands high requirements on the
control system of a robot. Due to typically narrow passages between obstacles,
precise navigation is required. To achieve accuracy in navigation, detailed
representation of the environment around the robot needs to be developed.
Robust and precise mapping of the environment helps in overcoming the dynamics
in the living environment like movement of furniture and human beings. Prompt
recovery from unreachable paths while navigating is also an essential component
of the living environment robots. This paper describes a behaviour-based
navigation system in assisted living environments. The navigation system uses a
grid map created from data obtained from laser scanner and ultrasonic sensors
mounted on a small sized robot, ARTOS. ARTOS is specially designed for indoor
living environments able to navigate through narrow corridors and closely
placed furniture in the living environment. Keywords: assisted living robot, mapping, mapping and navigation, navigation | |||
| Wheelchair-based open robotic platform and its performance within the AmbienNet project | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 63 | |
| Borja Bonail; Julio Abascal; Luis Gardeazabal | |||
| This paper presents the design and development of the Robochair robotic
wheelchair and its performance within the AmbienNet project. Robochair is an
open robotic platform intended to assist challenged users with their daily
driving tasks. It uses and extents the Player robotics framework providing
uniform access to either robotics hardware and user input/output devices. In
addition to that, and from low level point of view, the CANopen communication
layer is used for the communication of any device within Robochair, which
allows interoperability and exchangeability of different third party devices.
In addition, the paper describes a navigation assistance application within the
context of AmbienNet project, where an intelligent environment called AmbienNet
supports the global navigation of Robochair wheelchair. Keywords: development, intelligent environment, robotics wheelchair, shared control | |||
| Hybrid tracking approach for assistive environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 64 | |
| Constantinos Lalos; Vasilios Anagnostopoulos; Kleopatra Konstanteli; Theodora Varvarigou | |||
| Camera based supervision is a critical component for patient monitoring in
assistive environments. However, visual tracking still remains one of the
biggest challenges in the area computer vision although it has been extensively
studied during the previous decades. It this paper we propose a hybrid Rao --
Blackwellzed particle filter that combines two efficient, well-known tracking
techniques with an innovative color observation representation method in order
to improve the overall tracking performance. This representation is combined
with color and edge representation to obtain improved tracking efficiency.
Furthermore, the global edge description template for the edge representation
(histogram of oriented gradients) was obtained using a machine learning
technique. Initial experiments show that the principle behind the proposed
algorithm is sound, yielding good results and thus allowing its adoption as an
initial stage for patient behavior recognition. Keywords: Rao-Blackwell particle filter, probabilistic principal components analysis | |||
| Learning to recognise behaviours of persons with dementia using multiple cues in an HMM-based approach | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 65 | |
| Christian Peters; Sven Wachsmuth; Jesse Hoey | |||
| This paper presents a learning technique for visual event recognition in a
system that assists persons with dementia during handwashing. The challenge is
that persons with dementia present a wide variety of behaviors during a single
task, typically changing their behaviours drastically from day to day. Any
attempt at modeling this variety requires a large set of features, image
regions, and temporal dynamics. In this paper, we approach this challenge by
supervised learning of generative models from manually segmented and labelled
video sequences. Our method uses a generic set of appearance-based colour,
motion and texture features, over a static set of regions. We then present two
HMM architectures that incorporate multiple image regions by either fusing on a
feature-level, or later in the recognition process using a mixture-of-experts
approach, in which a gating HMM is applied for the dynamic selection between
specialised expert HMMs. Our models are trained on a clinical database of
videos, and we compare the HMM approaches with a nearest neighbours scheme. Our
results confirm the challenge we present, and indicate that our generative
modelling techniques are suitable for inclusion in future prototypes of the
hand washing assistant. Keywords: HMM, event recognition, supervised learning, task assistance | |||
| Towards faster activity search using embedding-based subsequence matching | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 66 | |
| Panagiotis Papapetrou; Paul Doliotis; Vassilis Athitsos | |||
| Event search is the problem of identifying events or activity of interest in
a large database storing long sequences of activity. In this paper, our topic
is the problem of identifying activities of interest in databases where such
activities are represented as time series. In the typical setup, the user
presents a query that represents an activity of interest, and the system needs
to retrieve the most similar activities stored in the database. We focus on the
case where the best database matches are not segmented a priori: the database
contains representations of long, continuous activity, that occurs throughout
relatively extensive periods of time, and, given a query, there are no
constraints as to when exactly a database match starts and ends within the
longer activity pattern where it is contained. Using the popular DTW measure,
the best database matches can be found using dynamic programming. However,
retrieval time is linear to the size of the database and can become too long as
the database size becomes larger. To achieve more efficient retrieval time, we
apply to this problem a recently proposed technique called Embedding-based
Subsequence Matching (EBSM), and we demonstrate that using EBSM we can obtain
significant speedups in retrieval time. Keywords: dynamic time warping, embedding-based subsequence matching (EBSM),
embeddings, subsequence matching, time series | |||
| Carbon nanotube coated high-throughput neurointerfaces in assistive environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 67 | |
| Mario I. Romero-Ortega; Ali R. Butt; Samir M. Iqbal | |||
| Loosing motor activity due to impaired or damaged nerves or muscles affects
millions of people world-wide. The resulting lack of mobility and/or impaired
communication bears enormous personal, economical and social costs. While
several assistive technologies exist, they rely on device surrogates to
compensate for the lack of movement and thus provide limited utility and
unnatural interface with the user. The ability of interfacing populations of
neurons with super high-density multielectrode arrays (SD-MEA) can provide the
sensing from and control of bionics devices by thought. Here we propose a
neurointerfacing approach using SD-MEAs coated with carbon nanotubes and
high-speed computing to overcome latency and long-term electrical viability
bottlenecks that are essential in assistive environments. The proposed approach
provides ability for fast integration of recording/stimulation from thousands
of individually addressable electrodes, while coordinating a real-time
computing approach to register, recognize, analyze and respond appropriately to
the biological signals from the motor neurons and sensory signals from the
robotic prosthesis. Keywords: carbon nanotubes, nanotechnology, reliable computing, super high-density
microelectrode arrays (SD-MEA) | |||
| Developing quantum nanocomputing for pervasive health environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 68 | |
| K. Prousalis; E. Konstantinou; N. Konofaos; A. A. Iliadis | |||
| A model of quantum information processing is proposed for applications in
health-care and assistive environments. It uses implanted nano-chips which
could incorporate quantum computing technology and make use of the advantages
of high computing and large memory capacity of a quantum system to the data
storage procedure of a medical sensor. Quantum information and its storage has
not yet been physically demonstrated due to the problem of decoherence that
dominates such quantum systems. Fault-tolerant quantum error-correction (QEC)
circuits have done great efforts to reduce the noise level. In this work a QEC
circuit simulator is proposed which takes into consideration the memory noise
and the gate noise produced during the evolving process of qubits. For any
computational step the probability crash is estimated under different error
rates and various parameters. A case study is presented involving data recorded
by a pacemaker. Keywords: crash probability, fault-tolerant methods, health data, pervasive health
environments, quantum computing, quantum error-correction code, quantum
nanocomputing applications | |||
| Nanotechnology for biomedicine: past, present and future | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 69 | |
| Robert W. Newcomb | |||
| During the last few years nanotechnology has made many advances especially
in the biomedical area. Some of the terminology is defined with illustrative
devices under consideration discussed here with a view toward what will be
coming up in the future. Keywords: biomedical engineering, nanotechnology | |||
| End to end secure communication in ad-hoc assistive medical environments using secure paths | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 70 | |
| D. Vassis; P. Belsis; C. Skourlas; S. Gritzalis | |||
| Recent advances in technology introduce many new capabilities for several
sectors. Among else, the continuous improvement and integration of new features
in mobile devices, allow their interoperation and integration to a large number
of environments; primarily the medical sector may suffice from their
utilization in order to monitor efficiently the condition of patients and
provide feedback to specialists, especially in cases of absence of a stable
(wired) network infrastructure. Strict security requirements emerge due to the
sensitivity of data being transmitted, often imposed by different international
legislation processes. We present an architecture that allows secure
dissemination of medical information in a secure manner in the absence of
stable topologies and infrastructures built upon resource efficient devices.
The presented architecture utilizes advanced management techniques, achieving
secure and privacy-preserving transmission of sensitive data. A number of
initial measurements show the effective operation of our architecture in
presence of an adequately large number of users participating in the
performance test-bed scenario. Keywords: information retrieval, medical information systems, security and privacy,
wireless environments | |||
| Pervasive healthcare: the elderly perspective | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 71 | |
| Linda Little; Pam Briggs | |||
| The pervasive vision of future technologies raises important questions on
how people, especially the elderly, will be able to use, trust and maintain
privacy. To begin to address such issues, we conducted focus group sessions
with elderly participants aged from 65 to 89 years. The groups were shown three
Videotaped Activity Scenarios [5] depicting pervasive or ubiquitous computing
applications in three contexts: health, commerce and e-voting. The resultant
data was coded in terms of stakeholder, user and system issues. The data is
discussed here from the user perspective -- specifically in terms of concerns
about trust and privacy. Keywords: elderly, privacy, trust, ubiquitous computing | |||
| Security and trust in virtual healthcare communities | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 72 | |
| Anargyros Chryssanthou; Iraklis Varlamis; Charikleia Latsiou | |||
| The main purpose of a virtual healthcare community is to enforce members'
collaboration and allow them collectively conduct health care activities.
Patient monitoring and medical consultation and support are the most popular
activities inside health care communities. They bring together medical experts
and patients and require confidentiality, reliability and trust in order to be
successful. An examination of existing virtual communities for healthcare leads
to the conclusion that many of them fail to meet requirements for building
trust. Several ethical, legal and technical issues must be considered in order
to build a trustful community. This work presents the architecture of a virtual
healthcare community portal with emphasis on the issues that help building
trust inside the community. With a set of hypothetical usage scenarios that
challenge trust in the community we uncover healthcare community's pitfalls and
illustrate the solutions provided by the proposed architecture. Keywords: health care, security, teleconsultation, trust, virtual communities | |||
| Privacy aware data sharing: balancing the usability and privacy of datasets | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 73 | |
| Bhume Bhumiratana; Matt Bishop | |||
| Existing models of privacy assume that the set of data to be held
confidential is immutable. Unfortunately, that is often not the case. The need
for privacy is balanced against the need to use the data, and the benefits that
will accrue from the use of the data. We propose a model to balance privacy and
utility of data. This model allows both the data provider and the data user to
negotiate both requirements until a satisfactory balance is reached, or one (or
both) determine such a balance cannot be reached. Thus, this model enables less
than perfect privacy, or less than complete utility, as is appropriate for the
particular circumstances under which the data was gathered and is being held,
and the specific use to which it is to be put. Keywords: data anonymization, data sharing, information security, ontology, privacy,
security policy | |||
| Privacy risks in health databases from aggregate disclosure | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 74 | |
| Gautam Das; Nan Zhang | |||
| This paper focuses on privacy risks in health databases that arise in
assistive environments, where humans interact with the environment and this
information is captured, assimilated and events of interest are extracted. The
stakeholders of such an environment can range from caregivers to doctors and
supporting family. The environment also includes objects the person interacts
with, such as, wireless devices that generate data about these interactions.
The data streams generated by such an environment are massive. Such databases
are usually considered hidden, i.e., are only accessible online via restrictive
front-end web interfaces. Security issues specific to such hidden databases,
however, have been largely overlooked by the research community, possibly due
to the false sense of security provided by the restrictive access to such
databases. We argue that an urgent challenge facing such databases is the
disclosure of sensitive aggregates enabled by recent studies on the sampling of
hidden databases through its public web interface. To protect sensitive
aggregates, we enunciate the key design principles, propose a three-component
design, and suggest a number of possible techniques that may protect sensitive
aggregates while maintaining the service quality for normal search users. Our
hope is that this paper sheds lights on a fruitful direction of future research
in security issues related to hidden web databases. Keywords: hidden databases, privacy preservation | |||
| Personalized location based services with respect to privacy: a user oriented approach | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 75 | |
| Charalampos Patrikakis; Athanasios Voulodimos; George Giannoulis | |||
| In this paper, a platform for the creation and deployment of personalized
Location Based Services with respect to user's privacy is presented. The
platform is based on the creation of mobile services built from service
components that are located on a central server. The process of service
creation and personalization (including privacy level) is performed by the
mobile users, through the selection of the necessary components (tables,
attributes, rules). Keywords: context awareness, location based services, mobile applications, service
creation | |||
| PEON: privacy-enhanced opportunistic networks with applications in assistive environments | | BIBAK | Full-Text | 76 | |
| Zhengyi Le; Gauri Vakde; Matthew Wright | |||
| Opportunistic Networking holds a great deal of potential for making
communications easier and more flexible in pervasive assistive environments.
However, security and privacy must be addressed to make these communications
acceptable with respect to protecting patient privacy. In this position paper,
we propose Privacy-Enhanced Opportunistic Networking (PEON), a system for using
opportunistic networking in privacy-preserving way. PEON uses concepts from
anonymous communications, rerouting messages through groups of peer nodes to
hide the relation between the sources and destinations. By modifying group
size, we can trade off between privacy and communication overhead. Further,
individual nodes can make a similar trade off by changing the number of
intermediate groups. We describe the cryptographic tools needed to facilitate
changes in group membership and the design of simulation experiments that we
will conduct to evaluate the overhead and effectiveness of our approach. Keywords: anonymity, opportunistic networks, pervasive, privacy, wireless | |||