Intelligent environments: a manifesto

We explain basic features of an emerging area called Intelligent Environments. We give a short overview on how it has developed, what is the current state of the art and what are the challenges laying ahead. The aim of the article is to make aware the Computer Science community of this new development, the differences with previous dominant paradigms and the opportunities that this area offers to the scientific community and society

A sensor technology survey for a stress aware trading process

The role of the global economy is fundamentally important to our daily lives. The stock markets reflect the state of the economy on a daily basis. Traders are the workers within the stock markets who deal with numbers, statistics, company analysis, news and many other factors which influence the economy in real time. However, whilst making significant decisions within their workplace, traders must also deal with their own emotions. In fact, traders have one of the most stressful professional occupations. This survey merges current knowledge about stress effects and sensor technology by reviewing, comparing, and highlighting relevant existing research and commercial products that are available on the market. This assessment is made in order to establish how sensor technology can support traders to avoid poor decision making during the trading process. The purpose of this article is: 1) to review the studies about the impact of stress on the decision making process and on biological stress parameters that are applied in sensor design; 2) to compare different ways to measure stress by using sensors currently available in the market according to basic biometric principles under trading context; and 3) to suggest new directions in the use of sensor technology in stock markets

A Partially Automated Process For the Generation of Believable Human Behaviors

Modeling believable human behavior for use in simulations is a difficult task. It re- quires a great deal of time, and frequently requires coordination between members of different disciplines. In our research, we propose a method of partially automating the process, reducing the time it takes to create the model, and more easily allowing domain experts that are not programmers to adjust the models as necessary. Using Agent-Based modeling, we present MAGIC (Models Automatically Generated from Information Collected), an algorithm designed to automatically find points in the model’s decision process that require interaction with other agents or with the sim- ulation envionment and create a decision graph that contains the agent’s behavior pattern based upon raw data composed of time-sequential observations. We also present an alternative to the traditional Markov Decision Process that allows actions to be completed until a set condition is met, and a tool to allow domain experts to easily adjust the resulting models as needed. After testing the accuracy of our algorithm using synthetic data, we show the results of this process when it is used in a real-world simulation based upon a study of the medical administration pro- cess in hospitals conducted by the University of South Carolina’s Healthcare Process Redesign Center. In the healthcare study, it was necessary for the nurses to follow a very consistent process. In order to show the ability to use our algorithm in a variety of situations, we create a video game and record players’ movements. However, unlike the nursing simulation, the environment in the game simulation is more prone to changes that limit the appropriate set of actions taken by the humans being modeled. In order to account for the changes in the simulation, we present a simple method using the addition of a hierarchy of rules with our previous algorithm to limit the actions taken by the agent to ones that are appropriate for the current situation. In both the healthcare study and the video game, we find that there are multiple distinct patterns of behavior. As a single model would not accurately represent the behavior of all of the humans in the studies, we present a simple method of classifying the behavior of individuals using the decision graphs created by our algorithm. We then use our algorithm to create models for each cluster of behaviors, producing multiple models from one set of observational data. Believability is highly subjective. In our research, we present methods to partially automate the process of producing believable human agents, and test our results with real-world data using focus groups and a pseudo-Turing test. Our findings show that under the right conditions, it is possible to partially automate the modeling of human decision processes, but ultimately, believability is greatly dependent upon the similarity between the viewer and the humans being modeled

Developing an emotional-based application for human-agent societies

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00500-016-2289-5The purpose of this paper is to present an emotional-based application for human-agent societies. This kind of applications are those where virtual agents and humans coexist and interact transparently into a fully integrated environment. Specifically, the paper presents an application where humans are immersed into a system that extracts and analyzes the emotional states of a human group trying to maximize the welfare of those humans by playing the most appropriate music in every moment. This system can be used not only online, calculating the emotional reaction of people in a bar to a new song, but also in simulation, to predict the people s reaction to changes in music or in the bar layout.This work is partially supported by the MINECO/FEDER TIN2015-65515-C4-1-R and the FPI Grant AP2013-01276 awarded to Jaime-Andres Rincon.Rincón Arango, JA.; Julian Inglada, VJ.; Carrascosa Casamayor, C. 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A stress-awareness approach to safer decision making in the trading process integrating biometric sensor technology

La economía mundial ha llegado a tener una importancia fundamental y un claro impacto en nuestro día a día. Los traders, trabajadores de los mercados financieros, trabajan bajo estadísticas, análisis de compañías, noticias y muchos otros factores que influyen en la economía global en tiempo real. Además de tomar continuamente decisiones de riesgo, los traders también son influidos por sus propias emociones, llegando a atravesar momentos realmente estresantes. El trading es una de las profesiones más estresantes reconocidas mundialmente. Esta tesis aúna conocimientos sobre los efectos del estrés y sobre sensores como componente tecnológico, revisando, comparando y resaltando estudios relevantes y productos disponibles en el ámbito comercial. Este trabajo es utilizado para desarrollar un sistema que, usando la tecnología de sensores biométricos, puede ayudar a los traders a evitar que la toma de decisiones sea condicionada por el estrés durante el proceso de trading. Múltiples disciplinas, desde programas basados en inteligencia artificial hasta complejas funciones matemáticas, son usadas para ayudar a los traders en su esfuerzo por maximizar los beneficios. El problema es que hay un componente esencial que aún no es considerado como es la peligrosa influencia del estrés en la toma de decisiones de los traders, en este rápido entorno evolutivo que es el mercado financiero. Esta tesis toma en consideración la negativa influencia del estrés sobre los individuos y propone un sistema diseñado bajo una nueva arquitectura (Self-Aware Architecture) con base en la definición de unos principios biométricos para trading, proveyendo a los traders de la información necesaria para que sean conscientes en tiempo real de sus propios niveles de estrés, evitando de esta manera una toma de decisiones arriesgada por el propio estado del trader. El sistema ha sido diseñado considerando aspectos tecnológicos y psicológicos para mostrar esta información de la manera adecuada. Sensores biométricos son usados para reunir los datos necesarios para mostrar la información al trader. El sistema resultante es capaz de funcionar en traders individuales y en equipos de traders, ofreciendo en este último caso el nivel predominante de estrés colectivo. El sistema ha sido probado dentro de un entorno real y los resultados obtenidos son mostrados en esta tesis mostrando la evidencia de que un trader consciente de sus propios niveles de estrés puede mejorar su promedio de beneficios reduciendo el riesgo en su continua toma de decisiones. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------The role of the global economy is fundamentally important to our daily lives. The stock markets reflect the state of the economy on a daily basis. Traders are the workers within the stock markets who deal with numbers, statistics, company analysis, news and many other factors that influence the economy in real time. However, whilst making significant decisions within their workplace, traders must also deal with their own emotions. In fact, traders have one of the most stressful professional occupations. This work studies the current knowledge about stress effects and sensor technology by reviewing, comparing, and highlighting relevant existing research and commercial products that are available on the market. This study is made in order to design a system using sensor technology that supports traders to avoid the poor decision making during the trading process. Multiple disciplines, from programs with artificial intelligence to complex mathematical functions, are used to help traders in their effort to maximize profits. However, an essential problem yet not considered in this rapidly evolving environment is that traders are not supported to adequately manage how stress influences their decisions. This work takes into consideration the negative influences of stress on individuals and proposes a system designed to support traders by providing them with information that can reduce the likelihood of poor decision making. Traders are not aware of how their stress levels jeopardize safe decision making. This work, taking into consideration the known influences of stress on biometric changes, proposes a system, based in biometric principles for trading context, designed to cover this information gap and minimize the likelihood of poor decision making. The system has been designed bearing in mind both technical and physiological aspects to show the information in a suitable way. Biometric sensors are used to collect data associated with stress and a software platform based on a new architecture (Self-Aware architecture) has been developed to collect, analyse and display this information. This architecture is derived from a general model where the trading context will be a specific context fitting in the more general model to take advantage of the architecture in other stressful areas. The resulting system is capable of efficiently providing self-aware information for individual traders and self-aware collective information for teams of traders in trading companies. The system is tested in a real environment and the results provide evidence that self-aware traders could positively improve their daily final balance and diminish risky decision making

Avaliação da usabilidade de produtos e serviços "ambient assisted living" numa abordagem "living lab"

Doutoramento em Ciências e Tecnologias da SaúdeO envelhecimento demográfico constitui um desafio à sustentabilidade das sociedades modernas. A população idosa está sujeita a uma evidente diminuição da capacidade funcional, que pode ser minimizada através da utilização de soluções tecnológicas que diminuam a necessidade de assistência e, consequentemente, favoreçam uma velhice autónoma e independente. O Ambient Assited Living (AAL) refere-se a produtos e serviços tecnológicos inteligentes imbuídos no ambiente físico e que são facilitadores de interações inteligentes e naturais entre a pessoa idosa e o ambiente físico. Sendo os produtos e serviços AAL direcionados para a população idosa torna-se fundamental garantir a sua usabilidade. A Classificação Internacional de Funcionalidade, Incapacidade e Saúde (CIF), da Organização Mundial de Saúde, é um elemento chave que permite uma abordagem multidisciplinar, completa e centrada no indivíduo para a avaliação da funcionalidade humana. Segundo a CIF, os produtos e serviços AAL enquadram-se nos fatores ambientais que condicionam a funcionalidade humana. Este trabalho consistiu no desenvolvimento de uma metodologia adequada à avaliação da usabilidade de produtos e serviços AAL que utiliza a CIF como modelo enquadrador. O desenvolvimento desta metodologia baseou-se numa abordagem Living Lab que promove o envolvimento de todas as partes interessadas ao longo do processo de desenvolvimento. A metodologia de avaliação de usabilidade Living Usability Lab (LUL) é composta por três fases: validação conceptual, teste protótipo e teste piloto. A sua consolidação exigiu o desenvolvimento, adaptação e avaliação de um conjunto de instrumentos. Para a validação conceptual foram adaptados e criados inquéritos preliminares, personas e cenários. Para o teste protótipo e teste piloto realizou-se a tradução e adaptação cultural e linguística do Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ) e da System Usability Scale (SUS), e desenvolveu-se e validou-se a ICF Based Usability Scale (ICF-US). Nos testes de validação dos instrumentos estiveram envolvidos cerca de 60 utilizadores. A metodologia de avaliação de usabilidade LUL foi utilizada num estudo experimental com cerca de 80 utilizadores, em que se consideraram vários projetos de investigação em estádios de desenvolvimento diferentes, e que permitiu demonstrar a sua validade e robustez. Dentro dos vários métodos e ferramentas desenvolvidas, a ICF-US deve ser realçada. Esta foi construída com base no modelo conceptual da CIF e permite, por um lado, realizar uma avaliação global de usabilidade e, por outro, discriminar facilitadores e barreiras o que é fundamental numa abordagem Living Lab. Introduzir a CIF na avaliação de tecnologia é de extrema relevância, pois permite conciliar a área da funcionalidade humana com o AAL e assim estabelecer uma linguagem comum entre as diferentes partes envolvidas no desenvolvimento de produtos e serviços AAL.The demographic aging is a challenge to the sustainability of modern societies. The elderly population suffers a clear decrease of functional capacity, which can be minimized through the use of technological solutions that reduce the need for assistance and, consequently, favors autonomy and independence. The Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) refers to products and intelligent technological services imbued in the physical environment that are facilitators of smart and natural interactions between the elderly people and the physical environment. As AAL products and services are directed to the elderly population it is vital to ensure their usability. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF), proposed by the World Health Organization, is a key element that allows a multidisciplinary and comprehensive approach based on the individual to assess human functioning. According to the ICF, AAL products and services are considered environmental factors that affect individual functioning. This work consisted in developing an appropriate methodology to evaluate the usability of AAL products and services using the ICF as a conceptual model. The development of this methodology was based in a Living Lab approach, which advocates the involvement of all stakeholders in the development process. The usability evaluation methodology Living Usability Lab (LUL) consists of three phases: concept validation, prototype test and pilot test. Its consolidation required the development, adaptation and validation of a set of instruments. For the conceptual validation preliminary questionnaires, personas and scenarios were developed and adapted. For the prototype test and pilot test the translation, cultural and linguistic adaptation of the Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire (PSSUQ) and the System Usability Scale (SUS) were performed, and the ICF based Usability Scale (ICF-US) was developed and validated. The instruments validation tests involved around 60 users. The usability evaluation methodology was validated in an experimental study with 80 users that considered several research projects in different stages of development, and allowed to demonstrate its validity and robustness. Within the various methods and tools developed ICF-US should be highlighted. This was based on the conceptual model of the ICF and allows on the one hand, make an overall assessment of usability and on the other, discriminate facilitators and barriers which is fundamental in a Living Lab approach. Using the ICF in the evaluation of technology is extremely important because it reconciles the areas of human functioning and AAL, establishing a common language between the different parties involved in the development of AAL products and services