Interoperable services based on activity monitoring in ambient assisted living environments

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is considered as the main technological solution that will enable the aged and people in recovery to maintain their independence and a consequent high quality of life for a longer period of time than would otherwise be the case. This goal is achieved by monitoring human’s activities and deploying the appropriate collection of services to set environmental features and satisfy user preferences in a given context. However, both human monitoring and services deployment are particularly hard to accomplish due to the uncertainty and ambiguity characterising human actions, and heterogeneity of hardware devices composed in an AAL system. This research addresses both the aforementioned challenges by introducing 1) an innovative system, based on Self Organising Feature Map (SOFM), for automatically classifying the resting location of a moving object in an indoor environment and 2) a strategy able to generate context-aware based Fuzzy Markup Language (FML) services in order to maximize the users’ comfort and hardware interoperability level. The overall system runs on a distributed embedded platform with a specialised ceiling- mounted video sensor for intelligent activity monitoring. The system has the ability to learn resting locations, to measure overall activity levels, to detect specific events such as potential falls and to deploy the right sequence of fuzzy services modelled through FML for supporting people in that particular context. Experimental results show less than 20% classification error in monitoring human activities and providing the right set of services, showing the robustness of our approach over others in literature with minimal power consumption

Trail records and navigational learning

An emerging wave of 'ambient' technologies has the potential to support learning in new and particular ways. In this paper we propose a 'trail model' of 'navigational learning' which links some particular learning needs to the potentialities of these technologies. In this context, we outline the design and use of an 'experience recorder', a technology to support learning in museums. In terms of policy for the e-society, these proposals are relevant to the need for personalised and individualised learning support

Pervasive technology-enhanced learning system integrating working and learning situations

International audienceIn the p-LearNet project, we are interested in TEL systems integrating context-aware corporate learning and working activities for e-retail (shops and hypermarkets). The main issues of the p-LearNet project are: work-integrated learning and customer learning support whatever the place, the time, the organisational and technological contexts of the individual or collective learning and working processes. We propose an adaptive and context-aware model of scenario based on an interdisciplinary approach (education, computer science, social sciences, and business) for a pervasive learning system supporting working and learning situations. This model enables us to choose how to achieve activities according to the current situation. The scenario model is based on a hierarchical task model having the task/method paradigm - methods define how to achieve a task

Proximal business intelligence on the semantic web

This is the post-print version of this article. The official version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2010 Springer.Ubiquitous information systems (UBIS) extend current Information System thinking to explicitly differentiate technology between devices and software components with relation to people and process. Adapting business data and management information to support specific user actions in context is an ongoing topic of research. Approaches typically focus on providing mechanisms to improve specific information access and transcoding but not on how the information can be accessed in a mobile, dynamic and ad-hoc manner. Although web ontology has been used to facilitate the loading of data warehouses, less research has been carried out on ontology based mobile reporting. This paper explores how business data can be modeled and accessed using the web ontology language and then re-used to provide the invisibility of pervasive access; uncovering more effective architectural models for adaptive information system strategies of this type. This exploratory work is guided in part by a vision of business intelligence that is highly distributed, mobile and fluid, adapting to sensory understanding of the underlying environment in which it operates. A proof-of concept mobile and ambient data access architecture is developed in order to further test the viability of such an approach. The paper concludes with an ontology engineering framework for systems of this type – named UBIS-ONTO

Some Research Questions and Results of UC3M in the E-Madrid Excellence Network

32 slides.-- Contributed to: 2010 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), Madrid, Spain, 14-16 April, 2010.-- Presented by C. Delgado Kloos.Proceedings of: 2010 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), Madrid, Spain, 14-16 April, 2010Universidad Carlos III de Madrid is one of the six main participating institutions in the eMadrid excellence network, as well as its coordinating partner. In this paper, the network is presented together with some of the main research lines carried out by UC3M. The remaining papers in this session present the work carried out by the other five universities in the consortium.The Excellence Network eMadrid, “Investigación y Desarrollo de Tecnologías para el e-Learning en la Comunidad de Madrid” is being funded by the Madrid Regional Government under grant No. S2009/TIC-1650. In addition, we acknowledge funding from the following research projects: iCoper: “Interoperable Content for Performance in a Competency-driven Society” (eContentPlus Best Practice Network No. ECP-2007-EDU-417007), Learn3: Hacia el Aprendizaje en la 3ª Fase (“Plan Nacional de I+D+I” TIN2008-05163/ TSI), Flexo: “Desarrollo de aprendizaje adaptativo y accesible en sistemas de código abierto” (AVANZA I+D, TSI-020301- 2008-19), España Virtual (CDTI, Ingenio 2010, CENIT, Deimos Space), SOLITE (CYTED 508AC0341), and “Integración vertical de servicios telemáticos de apoyo al aprendizaje en entornos residenciales” (Programa de creación y consolidación de grupos de investigación de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid).Publicad

Proporcionar experiencias de aprendizaje ubicuo mediante la combinación de Internet de las Cosas y los estándares de e-Learning

[ES]Actualmente, el aprendizaje está teniendo lugar con mayor frecuencia en cualquier lugar y en cualquier momento. Esto implica que los ambientes del aprendizaje electrónico se expandan desde los entornos de aprendizaje solo virtuales a entornos que implican espacios físicos. Gracias a la evolución de Internet, las TIC (Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación) y a la Internet de las Cosas, se pueden experimentar nuevos escenarios de aprendizaje por parte de los estudiantes, ya sea individualmente o en colaboración. Estos escenarios de aprendizaje ubicuos, permiten compaginar tanto ambientes virtuales como ambientes físicos. Por tanto, estas experiencias se caracterizan por las interacciones posibles del estudiante con el entorno físico, la detección de los datos contextuales, y también la adaptación de las estrategias pedagógicas y de los servicios según el contexto. Este artículo pretende aprovechar esta tendencia y sustentarla en las normas existentes de aprendizaje electrónico como IMS LD y LOM. La solución propuesta es extender los modelos de normas de aprendizaje electrónico como IMS LD y LOM para soportar Internet de las Cosas y para aportar un enfoque de adaptación de las actividades de aprendizaje según el contexto del estudiante y su huella digital utilizando la API eXperience. En este contexto y con el fin de permitir las capacidades de razonamiento y la interoperabilidad entre los modelos propuestos se proponen representaciones ontológicas y una implementación de la solución. Además, se plantea una arquitectura técnica que resalta los componentes de software necesarios y sus interacciones. Y, por último, se implementa y se evalúa un escenario de aprendizaje ubicuo

Evaluating the development of wearable devices, personal data assistants and the use of other mobile devices in further and higher education institutions

This report presents technical evaluation and case studies of the use of wearable and mobile computing mobile devices in further and higher education. The first section provides technical evaluation of the current state of the art in wearable and mobile technologies and reviews several innovative wearable products that have been developed in recent years. The second section examines three scenarios for further and higher education where wearable and mobile devices are currently being used. The three scenarios include: (i) the delivery of lectures over mobile devices, (ii) the augmentation of the physical campus with a virtual and mobile component, and (iii) the use of PDAs and mobile devices in field studies. The first scenario explores the use of web lectures including an evaluation of IBM's Web Lecture Services and 3Com's learning assistant. The second scenario explores models for a campus without walls evaluating the Handsprings to Learning projects at East Carolina University and ActiveCampus at the University of California San Diego . The third scenario explores the use of wearable and mobile devices for field trips examining San Francisco Exploratorium's tool for capturing museum visits and the Cybertracker field computer. The third section of the report explores the uses and purposes for wearable and mobile devices in tertiary education, identifying key trends and issues to be considered when piloting the use of these devices in educational contexts