IAPMA 2011: 2nd Workshop on information access to personal media archives

Towards e-Memories: challenges of capturing, summarising, presenting, understanding, using, and retrieving relevant information from heterogeneous data contained in personal media archives. Welcome to IAPMA 2011, the second international workshop on "Information Access for Personal Media Archives". It is now possible to archive much of our life experiences in digital form using a variety of sources, e.g. blogs written, tweets made, social network status updates, photographs taken, videos seen, music heard, physiological monitoring, locations visited and environmentally sensed data of those places, details of people met, etc. Information can be captured from a myriad of personal information devices including desktop computers, PDAs, digital cameras, video and audio recorders, and various sensors, including GPS, Bluetooth, and biometric devices

Moving forward on u-healthcare: A framework for patient-centric

Delivering remote healthcare services without deteriorating the ‘patient experience’ requires building highly usable and adaptive applications. Efficient context data collection and management make possible to infer extra knowledge on the user’s situation, making easier the design of these advanced ubiquitous applications. This contribution, part of a work in progress which aims at building an operative AmI middleware, presents a generic architecture to provide u-healthcare services, to be delivered both in mobile and home environments. In particular, we address the design of the Context Management Component (CMC), the module that takes context data from the sensing layer and performs data fusion and reasoning to build an aggregated ‘context image’. We especially explain the requirements on data modelling and the functional features that are imposed to the CMC. The resulting logical multilayered architecture -composed by acquisition and fusion, inference and reasoning levels- is detailed, and the technologies needed to develop the Context Management Component are finally specifie

Home gateway do Living Usability Lab

Mestrado em Sistemas de InformaçãoA população sénior tem crescido exponencialmente nos últimos anos, o que leva a que haja uma procura de recursos de prestação de serviços de saúde que é maior do que a oferta. De forma a resolver este problema surgiu o Ambient Assisted Living para apoiar seniores no seu quotidiano, dentro das suas habitações. Neste documento é descrito o desenvolvimento do Home Gateway para apoio aos serviços Ambient Assisted Living, do projeto Living Usability Lab, e respetiva arquitetura. O Home Gateway é a entidade responsável por gerir todos os recursos oferecidos na habitação do sénior. A arquitetura deste sistema é baseada na arquitetura orientada a serviços, utilizando o OSGi. Os recursos são todos disponibilizados através de serviços Web pelo que são descritos alguns dos serviços implementados. O Home Gateway desenvolvido responde eficientemente à necessidade de este ser autónomo, de interoperabilidade, de segurança, de escalabilidade, de conter monitorização, de personalização, de adaptação, de ser embebido e distribuído, de providenciar interação explícita, entre outros. O sistema desenvolvido é passível de ser expandido a outras áreas de saúde e a outros leques etários, para além do apoio à população sénior na própria habitação. Em suma e tendo em conta as conclusões e limitações do trabalho desenvolvido torna-se evidente a possibilidade de trabalhos futuros focados em soluções que podem vir a ser implementadas.The elder population has been growing exponentially in the last years, which results in a greater search of provision of health care resources comparing to the provision of that services. In order to solve this problem the Ambient Assisted Living emerged to support the elderly in their daily life, within their homes. In this document, it’s described the development of the Home Gateway to support the services of Ambient Assisted Living, of Living Usability Lab project and its architecture. The Home Gateway is the entity responsible for managing all the resources available in the elderly's house. The Home Gateway architecture is based on service-oriented architecture using OSGi. The resources are all available through Web services, hence some of the implemented services are described. The developed Home Gateway responds effectively to the needs of being autonomous, of interoperability, security, scalability, monitoring, customization, adaptation, being impregnated and distributed, providing explicit interaction, among others. The system that has been developed may be used in other health areas and with different age ranges in addition to supporting the elderly in their own homes. In brief, and taking into account the conclusions and limitations of the developed work, it becomes clear the possibility of future work on the field focused on solutions that can be implemented

Arquitetura de serviços do Living Usability Lab

Mestrado em Sistemas de InformaçãoO aumento da esperança média de vida tem vindo a ser acompanhado por um aumento da quantidade de iniciativas AAL (Ambient Assisted Living). O Living Usability Lab (LUL) pretende o desenvolvimento de uma arquitetura inovadora para o desenvolvimento e teste de novos serviços e tecnologias AAL, incentivando um estilo de vida ativo e saudável para a população sénior ou com necessidades especiais. A presente dissertação propõe-se a descrever o trabalho desenvolvido no âmbito do projeto LUL, com especial ênfase na definição da arquitetura global de serviços. Após analisada a evolução das arquiteturas AAL é apresentado o modelo conceptual do projeto e a arquitetura definida para o desenvolvimento de novos serviços, promovendo aspetos como a disponibilidade e modularidade, explorando ainda uma perspetiva em Cloud Computing. De seguida, serão destacados os desenvolvimentos ao nível do Servidor Principal do LUL bem com alguns dos serviços nele disponibilizados. Fazendo uso das capacidades da arquitetura definida, o projeto culmina com o desenvolvimento de duas aplicações, uma para os Idosos e outra para os Profissionais de Saúde. A curto prazo, as aplicações e serviços desenvolvidos poderão ser testados num contexto real, por intermédio do Laboratório de Gerontologia (em fase final de construção) e da participação de algumas entidades relacionadas com a prestação de cuidados de saúde.The increase in life expectancy has been followed by an increased amount of AAL (Ambient Assisted Living) initiatives. The Living Usability Lab (LUL) aims to develop an innovative architecture for the development and testing of new AAL services and technologies, encouraging an active and healthy lifestyle for senior citizens or with special needs. This thesis intends to describe the work done under the project LUL, with particular emphasis on the definition of the services global architecture. After analyzing the evolution of AAL architectures is presented the conceptual model and the architecture defined for the development of new services, promoting aspects such as availability and scalability, also exploiting a Cloud Computing perspective. Then, the developments at the LUL Main Server will be highlighted along with some of its services. Making use of the capabilities of the defined architecture, the project culminates with the development of two applications, one for the Elderly and other for the Health Care Professionals. For the short term, applications and services developed can be tested in a real context, through the Gerontology Laboratory (in final stage of construction) and the participation of certain entities related to the provision of health care services

A model for context awareness for mobile applications using multiple-input sources

Context-aware computing enables mobile applications to discover and benefit from valuable context information, such as user location, time of day and current activity. However, determining the users’ context throughout their daily activities is one of the main challenges of context-aware computing. With the increasing number of built-in mobile sensors and other input sources, existing context models do not effectively handle context information related to personal user context. The objective of this research was to develop an improved context-aware model to support the context awareness needs of mobile applications. An existing context-aware model was selected as the most complete model to use as a basis for the proposed model to support context awareness in mobile applications. The existing context-aware model was modified to address the shortcomings of existing models in dealing with context information related to personal user context. The proposed model supports four different context dimensions, namely Physical, User Activity, Health and User Preferences. A prototype, called CoPro was developed, based on the proposed model, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the model. Several experiments were designed and conducted to determine if CoPro was effective, reliable and capable. CoPro was considered effective as it produced low-level context as well as inferred context. The reliability of the model was confirmed by evaluating CoPro using Quality of Context (QoC) metrics such as Accuracy, Freshness, Certainty and Completeness. CoPro was also found to be capable of dealing with the limitations of the mobile computing platform such as limited processing power. The research determined that the proposed context-aware model can be used to successfully support context awareness in mobile applications. Design recommendations were proposed and future work will involve converting the CoPro prototype into middleware in the form of an API to provide easier access to context awareness support in mobile applications

Assessment of ambient assisted living systems for patients with mild cognitive impairment

According to the World Health Organization, about 50 million people worldwide suffer from dementia. Ten million new cases added every year. Mild Cognitive Impairment (MCI) affects more than 15% of the population aged 65. Technological solutions, such as smart home technology with ubiquitous computing devices, 24/7 telemedical observation and support can alleviate the growing problem and lower pressure on the healthcare system. This approach is also preferable for homecare patients in distant and rural areas. MCI patients are mostly home-based. Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) systems provide tools for automatic registration of vital signs and other medically and socially important information. AAL system for MCI patients is a logical answer to the problem. At the same time, many of the proposed AAL systems are proprietary, technically complicated and have a high price tag for implementation and service. Also, some proposed technical solutions not entirely reflect the opinion of healthcare stakeholders. The current study was proposed as a way to bridge the possible differences in the positions. An online anonymous questionnaire for healthcare professionals was created to prove or disprove the number of interconnected hypotheses about the necessity and feasibility of AAL system for MCI patients. The main focus was made on the hypotheses: "There is necessity of AAL systems for the healthcare" and "AAL systems are capable of providing assistance for patients with Mild Cognitive Impairment". The questionnaire was presented to more than three hundred potential respondents. Around a hundred and twenty agreed to fill it, and sixty completed the whole questionnaire. Results were analyzed to produce some directions guideline for future technical applications of AAL systems for MCI patients and future research. Descriptive statistics show support for the implementation of general AAL and variants for MCI patients. Comparative analysis of ordinal data for specific groups of respondents is done with help of non-parametric tests. Mann–Whitney–Wilcoxon test and Kruskal-Wallis test are applied. Table questions results are analyzed with chisquare for frequency tables. Group analysis demonstrated relative positive uniformity in of responses in the support of AAL of MCI patients.Segundo a Organização Mundial da Saúde, cerca de 50 milhões de pessoas em todo o mundo sofrem de demência. Dez milhões de novos casos adicionados a cada ano. O comprometimento cognitivo leve (MCI) afeta mais de 15% da população com 65 anos. Soluções tecnológicas, como tecnologia de casa inteligente com dispositivos de computação onipresentes, observação e suporte telemédico 24 horas por dia, 7 dias por semana, podem aliviar o problema crescente e diminuir a pressão sobre o sistema de saúde. Essa abordagem também é preferível para pacientes de cuidados domiciliares em áreas distantes e rurais. Os pacientes com CCL são, em sua maioria, domiciliares. Os sistemas Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) fornecem ferramentas para registro automático de sinais vitais e outras informações médicas e socialmente importantes. O sistema AAL para pacientes com MCI é uma resposta lógica para o problema. Ao mesmo tempo, muitos dos sistemas AAL propostos são proprietários, tecnicamente complicados e têm um alto preço para implementação e serviço. Além disso, algumas soluções técnicas propostas não refletem inteiramente a opinião das partes interessadas na área da saúde. O presente estudo foi proposto como forma de colmatar as possíveis diferenças nas posições. Um questionário anônimo online para profissionais de saúde foi criado para comprovar ou refutar o número de hipóteses interligadas sobre a necessidade e viabilidade do sistema AAL para pacientes com CCL. O foco principal foi feito nas hipóteses: "Há necessidade de sistemas de AAL para a saúde" e "Os sistemas de AAL são capazes de prestar assistência a pacientes com Comprometimento Cognitivo Leve". O questionário foi apresentado a mais de trezentos respondentes potenciais. Cerca de cento e vinte concordaram em preenchê-lo e sessenta preencheram todo o questionário. Os resultados foram analisados para produzir algumas diretrizes para futuras aplicações técnicas de sistemas AAL para pacientes com MCI e pesquisas futuras. Estatísticas descritivas mostram suporte para a implementação de AAL geral e variantes para pacientes com CCL. A análise comparativa de dados ordinais para grupos específicos de respondentes é feita com a ajuda de testes não paramétricos. Aplicam-se os testes de Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon e Kruskal-Wallis. Os resultados das questões da tabela são analisados com qui-quadrado para tabelas de frequência. A análise do grupo demonstrou relativa uniformidade positiva nas respostas no suporte de AAL de pacientes com CCL.Selon l'Organisation mondiale de la santé, environ 50 millions de personnes dans le monde souffrent de démence. Dix millions de nouveaux cas ajoutés chaque année. Les troubles cognitifs légers (MCI) touchent plus de 15 % de la population âgée de 65 ans. Les solutions technologiques, telles que la technologie de la maison intelligente avec des appareils informatiques omniprésents, l'observation et le soutien télémédicaux 24 heures sur 24, 7 jours sur 7, peuvent atténuer le problème croissant et réduire la pression sur le système de santé. Cette approche est également préférable pour les patients en soins à domicile dans les régions éloignées et rurales. Les patients MCI sont pour la plupart à domicile. Les systèmes Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) fournissent des outils pour l'enregistrement automatique des signes vitaux et d'autres informations importantes sur le plan médical et social. Le système AAL pour les patients MCI est une réponse logique au problème. Dans le même temps, bon nombre des systèmes AAL proposés sont propriétaires, techniquement compliqués et ont un prix élevé pour la mise en oeuvre et le service. De plus, certaines solutions techniques proposées ne reflètent pas entièrement l'opinion des acteurs de santé. L'étude actuelle a été proposée comme un moyen de combler les différences possible dans les positions. Un questionnaire anonyme en ligne destiné aux professionnels de la santé a été créé pour prouver ou réfuter le nombre d'hypothèses interconnectées sur la nécessité et la faisabilité du système AAL pour les patients MCI. L'accent a été mis principalement sur les hypothèses: "Il existe une nécessité de systèmes AAL pour les soins de santé" et "Les systèmes AAL sont capables de fournir une assistance aux patients atteints de troubles cognitifs légers". Le questionnaire a été présenté à plus de trois cents répondants potentiels. Environ cent vingt ont accepté de le remplir, et soixante ont rempli tout le questionnaire. Les résultats ont été analysés pour produire des lignes directrices pour les futures applications techniques des systèmes AAL pour les patients MCI et l'avenir de la recherche. Les statistiques descriptives montrent un soutien à la mise en oeuvre de l'AAL général et des variantes pour les patients MCI. L'analyse comparative des données ordinales pour des groupes spécifiques de répondants est effectuée à l'aide de tests non paramétriques. Le test de Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon et le test de Kruskal-Wallis sont appliqués. Les résultats des questions de tableau sont analysés avec le chi carré pour les tableaux de fréquence. L'analyse de groupe a démontré une uniformité positive relative dans les réponses à l'appui de l'AAL des patients MCI

Intelligent techniques for context-aware systems

Nowadays, with advances in communication technologies, researches are focused in the fields of designing new devices with increasing capabilities, implanting software frameworks or middleware to make these devices interoperable. Building better human interfaces is a challenging task and the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to the process help associating semantic meaning to devices which makes possible the gesture recognition and voice recognition. This thesis is mainly concerned with the open problem in context-aware systems: the evaluation of these systems in Ambient Intelligence (AmI) environments. With regard to this issue, we argue that due to highly dynamic properties of the AmI environments, it should exist a methodology for evaluating these systems taking into account the type of scenarios. However in order to support with a solid ground for that discussion, some elements are to be discussed as well. In particular, we: • use a commercial platform that allows us to design and manage the contextual information of context- aware systems by means of a context manager included in the architecture; • analyze the formal representation of this contextual information by means of a knowledge based system (KBS); • discuss the possible methodologies to be used for modelling knowledge in KBS and our approach; • give reasons why intelligent agents is a valid technique to be applied to systems in AmI environments; • propose a generic multi-agent system (MAS) architecture that can be applied to a large class of envisaged AmI applications; • propose a multimodal user interface and its integration with our MAS; • propose an evaluation methodology for context-aware systems in AmI scenarios. The formulation of the above mentioned elements became necessary as this thesis was developed. The lack of an evaluation methodology for context-aware systems in AmI environments, where so many issues to be covered, took us to the main objective of this thesis. In this regard: • we provide an updated and exhaustive state-of-the-art of this matter; • examine the properties and characteristics of AmI scenarios; • put forward an evaluation methodology and experimentally test our methodology in AmI scenarios. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------La Inteligencia Ambiental y los entornos inteligentes hacen hincapié en una mayor facilidad de uso, soporte de servicios más eficientes, el apoderamiento de los usuarios, y el apoyo a las interacciones humanas. En esta visión, las personas estarán rodeadas de interfaces inteligentes e intuitivas incrustados en objetos cotidianos que nos rodean y los sistemas desarrollados para este ambiente deberán reconocer y responder a la presencia de individuos de una manera invisible y transparente a ellos. Esta tesis se centra principalmente en el problema abierto en los sistemas sensibles al contexto: la evaluación de estos sistemas en los entornos de Inteligencia Ambiental. Con respecto a este tema, se argumenta que debido a las propiedades altamente dinámica de los entornos de inteligencia ambiental, debería existir una metodología para la evaluación de estos sistemas, teniendo en cuenta el tipo de escenarios. Sin embargo, con el fin de apoyar con una base sólida para la discusión, algunos elementos deben ser discutidos también. En particular, nosotros: • Usamos una plataforma comercial que nos permite diseñar y gestionar la información contextual de los sistemas sensibles al contexto a través de un gestor de contexto incluido en la arquitectura; • Analizamos la representación formal de esta información contextual a través de un sistema basado en el conocimiento (SBC); • Discutimos las posibles metodologías que se utilizarán para el modelado del conocimiento en SBC y nuestra aproximación y propuesta; • Discutimos las razones del por qué los agentes inteligentes son una técnica válida para ser aplicada a los sistemas en entornos inteligencia ambiental; • Proponemos un sistema multi-agente (SMA), con una arquitectura genérica que se puede aplicar a una gran clase de aplicaciones de inteligencia ambiental; • Proponemos una interfaz de usuario multimodales y su integración con nuestro SMA; • Proponemos una metodología de evaluación de los sistemas sensibles al contexto en los escenarios de inteligencia ambiental. La formulación de los elementos antes mencionados se hizo necesaria en la medida que esta tesis se ha desarrollado. La falta de una metodología de evaluación de los sistemas sensibles al contexto en entornos de inteligencia ambiental, donde existen tantos temas a tratar, nos llevó al objetivo principal de esta tesis. En este sentido, en esta tesis: • Proporcionamos un estado del arte actualizado y exhaustivo de este asunto; • Examinamos las propiedades y características de los escenarios de inteligencia ambiental; • Proponemos una metodología de evaluación para este tipo de sistemas y experimentalmente probamos nuestra metodología en diversos escenarios de inteligencia ambiental

Adaptive sensing and transmissions on an Automatic Weather Station: design of a practical system deployed on a glacier.

Il presente lavoro di tesi tratta l'ottimizzazione, dal punto di vista energetico, di una Automatic Weather Station (AWS), installata sul ghiacciaio di La Mare in Trentino Alto-Adige. Innanzitutto, viene migliorato il sistema di trasferimento dei dati raccolti dai sensori. Grazie a questo nuovo metodo, la stazione è in grado di connettersi autonomamente ad un server remoto per l'invio dei dati raccolti. Successivamente, viene implementato sulla AWS un modello matematico di pannello solare, che rappresenta la fonte di energia della stazione. Questo modello calcola l'energia disponibile, applicandola ad alcune politiche adattive che si occupano di migliorare i consumi, modificando il comportamento della stazione, in funzione dell'energia disponibile nell'ambiente. La capacità di un sistema automatico di auto-adattarsi e auto-riconfigurarsi al variare delle condizioni ambientali rappresenta uno dei punti chiave del paradigma dell'autonomic sensing. Infine, viene reso configurabile il comportamento della stazione, parametrizzando alcuni aspetti del codice in esecuzione sulla AWS. Durante la connessione al server remoto per il trasferimento dati, la stazione riceve un file di configurazione, contenente alcuni parametri che permettono di variare il funzionamento delle politiche adattive. Tali parametri sono configurabili da parte di un operatore, che li può quindi adattare alle proprie esigenze, prima di inviarli alla AWS. This work is about the energetic optimization of an Automatic Weather Station (AWS), deployed on La Mare Glacier in Trentino Alto-Adige. First of all, the data-transfer system is enhanced. Using this method, the station is able to autonomously connect to a remote server, to send fresh sensed data. Besides, a mathematical model of a solar panel is implemented on the station. Solar power is in fact the energetic source for the AWS. This model calculates the available energy, and applies it to a set of adaptive energy policies, which try to optimize the station energy consumption, by modifying the behavior of the station, based on the available energy in the environment. The ability to auto-adapt and auto-reconfigure on environmental conditions change, is for an automatic system, one of the key points concerning autonomic sensing. In the end, the behavior of the station is made configurable, by introducing parameters in the station application code. During the connection to the remote server, the station receives a configuration file, containing some parameters which allow the station to change the adaptive policies behavior. These parameters are user-configurable, thus an operator may customize these parameters, before sending them to the AWS

Progetto di reti Sensori Wireless e tecniche di Fusione Sensoriale

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) envisions a world where smart, electronic environments are aware and responsive to their context. People moving into these settings engage many computational devices and systems simultaneously even if they are not aware of their presence. AmI stems from the convergence of three key technologies: ubiquitous computing, ubiquitous communication and natural interfaces. The dependence on a large amount of fixed and mobile sensors embedded into the environment makes of Wireless Sensor Networks one of the most relevant enabling technologies for AmI. WSN are complex systems made up of a number of sensor nodes, simple devices that typically embed a low power computational unit (microcontrollers, FPGAs etc.), a wireless communication unit, one or more sensors and a some form of energy supply (either batteries or energy scavenger modules). Low-cost, low-computational power, low energy consumption and small size are characteristics that must be taken into consideration when designing and dealing with WSNs. In order to handle the large amount of data generated by a WSN several multi sensor data fusion techniques have been developed. The aim of multisensor data fusion is to combine data to achieve better accuracy and inferences than could be achieved by the use of a single sensor alone. In this dissertation we present our results in building several AmI applications suitable for a WSN implementation. The work can be divided into two main areas: Multimodal Surveillance and Activity Recognition. Novel techniques to handle data from a network of low-cost, low-power Pyroelectric InfraRed (PIR) sensors are presented. Such techniques allow the detection of the number of people moving in the environment, their direction of movement and their position. We discuss how a mesh of PIR sensors can be integrated with a video surveillance system to increase its performance in people tracking. Furthermore we embed a PIR sensor within the design of a Wireless Video Sensor Node (WVSN) to extend its lifetime. Activity recognition is a fundamental block in natural interfaces. A challenging objective is to design an activity recognition system that is able to exploit a redundant but unreliable WSN. We present our activity in building a novel activity recognition architecture for such a dynamic system. The architecture has a hierarchical structure where simple nodes performs gesture classification and a high level meta classifiers fuses a changing number of classifier outputs. We demonstrate the benefit of such architecture in terms of increased recognition performance, and fault and noise robustness. Furthermore we show how we can extend network lifetime by performing a performance-power trade-off. Smart objects can enhance user experience within smart environments. We present our work in extending the capabilities of the Smart Micrel Cube (SMCube), a smart object used as tangible interface within a tangible computing framework, through the development of a gesture recognition algorithm suitable for this limited computational power device. Finally the development of activity recognition techniques can greatly benefit from the availability of shared dataset. We report our experience in building a dataset for activity recognition. Such dataset is freely available to the scientific community for research purposes and can be used as a testbench for developing, testing and comparing different activity recognition techniques