An alert mechanism for orientation systems based on Speculative computation

The role of assistive technologies is to help users with diminished capabilities in the fulfillment of their everyday tasks. One of such tasks is orientation. It is crucial for the autonomy of an individual and, at the same time, it is one of the most challenging tasks for an individual with cognitive disabilities. Existing solutions that tackle this problem are mostly concerned with guidance, tracking and the display of information. However, there is a dimension that has not been the object of concern in existing projects, the prediction of user actions. This work presents a Speculative Module for an orientation system that is used to alert the user for potential mistakes in his path, anticipating possible shifts in the wrong direction in critical points of the route. With this module, it becomes possible to issue warnings to the user and increase his attention so as to avoid a deviation from the correct path.This work is part-funded by ERDF - European Regional Development Fund through the COMPETE Programme (operational programme for competitiveness) and by National Funds through the FCT Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) within project FCOMP-01-0124-FEDER- 028980 (PTDC/EEI-SII/1386/2012) and within Project Scope UID/CEC/00319/2013. The work of João Ramos is supported by a doctoral the FCT grant SFRH/BD/89530/2012. The work of Tiago Oliveira is also supported by the FCT grant with the reference SFRH/BD/85291/2012.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An orientation method with prediction and anticipation features

Nowadays, progress is constant and inherent to a living society. This may occur in different arenas, namely in mathematical evaluation and healthcare. Assistive technologies are a topic under this evolution, being extremely important in helping users with diminished capabilities (physical, sensory, intellectual). These technologies assist people in tasks that were difficult or impossible to execute. A common diminished task is orientation, which is crucial for the user autonomy. The adaptation to such technologies should require the minimum effort possible in order to enable the person to use devices that convey assistive functionalities. There are several solutions that help a human being to travel between two different locations, however their authors are essentially concerned with the guidance method, giving special attention to the user interface. The CogHelper system aims to overcome these systems by applying a framework of Speculative Computation, which adds a prediction feature for the next user movement giving an anticipation ability to the system. Thus, an alert is triggered before the user turn towards an incorrect path. The travelling path is also adjusted to the user preferences through a trajectory mining module.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013. The work of João Ramos is supported by a doctoral the FCT grant SFRH/BD/89530/2012. The work of Tiago Oliveira is also supported by the FCT grant with the reference SFRH/BD/85291/2012info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Orientation system based on speculative computation and trajectory mining

Assistive technologies help users with disabilities (physical, sensory, intellectual) to perform tasks that were difficult or impossible to execute. Thus, the user autonomy is increased through this technology. Although some adaptation of the user might be needed, the effort should be minimum in order to use devices that convey assistive functionalities. In cognitive disabilities a common diminished capacity is orientation, which is crucial for the autonomy of an individual. There are several research works that tackle this problem, however they are essentially concerned with user guidance and application interface (display of information). The work presented herein aims to overcome these systems through a framework of Speculative Computation, which adds a prediction feature for the next move of the user. With an anticipation feature and a trajectory mining module the user is guided through a preferred path receiving anticipated alerts before a possible shift in the wrong direction.This work has been supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT Fundaçãao para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/2013. The work of João Ramos is supported by a doctoral the FCT grant SFRH/BD/89530/2012. The work of Tiago Oliveira is also supported by the FCT grant with the reference SFRH/BD/85291/2012info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Orientation method for people with cognitive disabilities

Doctoral Thesis (Degree in Biomedical Engineering)Pessoas com incapacidade (física ou cognitiva) representam uma pequena percentagem da população de um país. No entanto, os custos de saúde inerentes a este grupo de pessoas são habitualmente elevados quando comparados com uma pessoa normal. Assim, é necessário encontrar soluções que ajudem no dia a dia destas pessoas. Aquando do diagnóstico de perdas cognitivas, se tal já não tiver ocorrido, o paciente pode ser impedido de viver sozinho e a presença de um cuidador poderá ser necessária. De forma a diminuir esta invasão de privacidade e permitir uma vida independente do paciente na sua própria casa é necessária adaptar a mesma ao conceito de casa inteligente, a qual permite que o cuidador aceda de forma remota e verifique o estado do utilizador. Porém, a casa inteligente não permite a monitorização do utilizador quando este se encontra no exterior. Assim, de forma a manter-se seguro, este pode tornar-se um prisioneiro da sua própria habitação. Para que a pessoa com perdas cognitiva tenha uma normal interação com a sociedade surge a necessidade de um sistema de orientação adaptável ao exterior e que esteja em conformidade com este grupo de utilizadores. Se se considerarem os dois principais sistemas operativos para dispositivos móveis (i.e., iOS e Android) existe um grande número de aplicações que guiam o utilizador até ao destino pretendido utilizando GPS. Porém, existem muito poucas que sejam adequadas para pessoas com incapacidade. Por outro lado, para além da capacidade de orientação, existe uma outra característica deveras significativa do ponto de vista do cuidador, a capacidade de localização que lhe permite o acesso de forma remota à localização do utilizador final. Esta característica é vital uma vez que os métodos tradicionais de orientação são realmente dispendiosos, levando os cuidadores a acompanhar os pacientes durante as suas deslocações. Desta forma, tanto o tempo como os recursos despendidos durante a aprendizagem são desperdiçados. Vários autores desenvolveram sistemas de orientação adaptados tendo em consideração as características e especificidades do utilizador. A principal preocupação centrava-se na interface do utilizador, uma vez que consideravam que os sistemas disponíveis eram demasiado complexos para serem utilizados por este tipo de indivíduos. O sistema desenvolvido (i.e., CogHelper) tem uma interface adaptada ao utilizador, a qual utiliza realidade aumentada para concretizar o processo de orientação. O sistema possui também a capacidade de localização em tempo real onde o(s) cuidador(es) podem monitorizar o utilizador final. O nosso principal objectivo não recaiu sobre a interface do utilizador, uma vez que esta já tinha sido previamente estudada, mas na forma como a informação era fornecida ao utilizador. Desta forma, o caminho selecionado para guiar o utilizador é adaptado às suas preferências. De forma a prevenir possíveis erros durante o percurso, o sistema calcula possíveis pontos nos quais o utilizador pode tomar uma decisão errada, e alertá-lo de forma a manter-se no caminho correto. Estas características baseiam-se num módulo de pattern mining (para fornecer o caminho adaptado) e numa abordagem de computação especulativa (para antecipar possíveis erros do utilizador).People with disabilities (physical or cognitive) represent a small percentage of a country population. However, the health costs are usually higher when compared to an ordinary person. Thus, one should seek solutions to help the day life of such group of people. When diagnosed with cognitive disabilities the patient may be prevented to live alone and a caregiver may be needed. To avoid this privacy invasion and enable the patient to live independently in his home, there is the need to adapt it to the concept of smart house, which enables the caregiver to remotely access and check the user status. However, the smart house is not able to monitor the user when he goes outside its premises. Thus, in order to keep the user safe, he may become a prisoner of his own home. To engage people with cognitive disabilities in a normal interaction with the surrounding environment there is the need of a portable orientation system that works outdoors and is adapted to this audience. If one look over the two main operative systems for mobile devices (i.e., iOS and Android) there is a huge number of applications that guides the user through GPS to the intended destination. However, there are just a few adapted to people with disabilities. Besides the orientation feature there is also another important one from the perspective of the caregivers, i.e., a localization feature which allows these second type of users to remotely access the main user location. This is specially important since traditional methods are very expensive, and due to this lack of information caregivers tend to be all the time with the patient during his journey. Thus, the effort and resources spent to teach the user are wasted. Different authors had developed adapted orientation systems considering the user specificities and characteristics. Their main concern was the user interface, since they considered that available systems were too complex to be used by these group of people. The system that was developed (i.e., CogHelper) has an adapted interface, which uses augmented reality to provide the orientation to the user. It has also a real-time localization feature where caregivers may know the user location. Our focus was not on the user interface, since it was already studied, but on how to provide the necessary information to the user. Thus, the path followed by the user is adapted to his preferences. In order to avoid mistakes during the traveling path, the system may calculate possible locations in which the user takes the wrong turn and alert him to keep on the correct path. These features are based on a pattern mining module (to provide the preferred path) and on a speculative computation approach (to anticipate possible user mistakes).The work of João Ramos is supported by a doctoral grant by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (SFRH/BD/89530/2012)

Remembrance Archives

The article proposes a reflection on the design role and a speculative project about the topic of temporality in the digital city. The notion of socio-technical system (Whitworth 2009) is used to show how in a society characterized by high technological density the city model could approach the one of a factory (Armando & Durbiano 2019). In a socio-technical system the capillarity of the interactions between men and machines is central in beating the rhythm of the subjects’ behaviors acting its space. Furthermore in the contemporary landscape the analytics systems producing predictions introduce an additional temporal layer (Hansen 2015) used as a filter to read and design these behaviors (Pentland 2019) and the city planning. Artificial intelligences, synthesizing the data harvested, produce precognition simulating behaviors in the digital in order to anticipate them in the analogical. It is claimed that within these temporal loops only an incremental optimization is possible and that to design exclusively through this filter could cause a folding of time that would lead the city to live in a temporal bubble, whereas the city lives on many different temporal lines contributing to the imagination and to the collective memory (Gregotti 1966). Therefore design has to address this challenge bringing the question of the memory at the project's center (Zannoni 2018). A speculative project called Remembrance Archives is proposed. Remembrance Archives aims to hack the temporal bubble by the injection of data drawn from the past of the city history that will alter the regular output of the artificial intelligence predictive models in unexpected ways, practicing an actual work of remembrance through which people will interact with the city memories as a source of new meanings and imaginar

Internet of things

Manual of Digital Earth / Editors: Huadong Guo, Michael F. Goodchild, Alessandro Annoni .- Springer, 2020 .- ISBN: 978-981-32-9915-3Digital Earth was born with the aim of replicating the real world within the digital world. Many efforts have been made to observe and sense the Earth, both from space (remote sensing) and by using in situ sensors. Focusing on the latter, advances in Digital Earth have established vital bridges to exploit these sensors and their networks by taking location as a key element. The current era of connectivity envisions that everything is connected to everything. The concept of the Internet of Things(IoT)emergedasaholisticproposaltoenableanecosystemofvaried,heterogeneous networked objects and devices to speak to and interact with each other. To make the IoT ecosystem a reality, it is necessary to understand the electronic components, communication protocols, real-time analysis techniques, and the location of the objects and devices. The IoT ecosystem and the Digital Earth (DE) jointly form interrelated infrastructures for addressing today’s pressing issues and complex challenges. In this chapter, we explore the synergies and frictions in establishing an efficient and permanent collaboration between the two infrastructures, in order to adequately address multidisciplinary and increasingly complex real-world problems. Although there are still some pending issues, the identified synergies generate optimism for a true collaboration between the Internet of Things and the Digital Earth

Multi-Agent Systems

This Special Issue ""Multi-Agent Systems"" gathers original research articles reporting results on the steadily growing area of agent-oriented computing and multi-agent systems technologies. After more than 20 years of academic research on multi-agent systems (MASs), in fact, agent-oriented models and technologies have been promoted as the most suitable candidates for the design and development of distributed and intelligent applications in complex and dynamic environments. With respect to both their quality and range, the papers in this Special Issue already represent a meaningful sample of the most recent advancements in the field of agent-oriented models and technologies. In particular, the 17 contributions cover agent-based modeling and simulation, situated multi-agent systems, socio-technical multi-agent systems, and semantic technologies applied to multi-agent systems. In fact, it is surprising to witness how such a limited portion of MAS research already highlights the most relevant usage of agent-based models and technologies, as well as their most appreciated characteristics. We are thus confident that the readers of Applied Sciences will be able to appreciate the growing role that MASs will play in the design and development of the next generation of complex intelligent systems. This Special Issue has been converted into a yearly series, for which a new call for papers is already available at the Applied Sciences journal’s website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci/special_issues/Multi-Agent_Systems_2019

A systematic review of crime facilitated by the consumer Internet of Things

The nature of crime is changing — estimates suggest that at least half of all crime is now committed online. Once everyday objects (e.g. televisions, baby monitors, door locks) that are now internet connected, collectively referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT), have the potential to transform society, but this increase in connectivity may generate new crime opportunities. Here, we conducted a systematic review to inform understanding of these risks. We identify a number of high-level mechanisms through which offenders may exploit the consumer IoT including profiling, physical access control and the control of device audio/visual outputs. The types of crimes identified that could be facilitated by the IoT were wide ranging and included burglary, stalking, and sex crimes through to state level crimes including political subjugation. Our review suggests that the IoT presents substantial new opportunities for offending and intervention is needed now to prevent an IoT crime harvest