Hospitality Information Systems: Intuitive, Object-Oriented, and Wireless Technology

Automated information system design and implementation is one of the fastest changing aspects of the hospitality industry. During the past several years nothing has increased the professionalism or improved the productivity within the industry more than the application of computer technology. Intuitive software applications, deemed the first step toward making computers more people-literate, object-oriented programming, intended to more accurately model reality, and wireless communications are expected to play a significant role in future technological advancement

TechNews digests: Jan - Mar 2010

TechNews is a technology, news and analysis service aimed at anyone in the education sector keen to stay informed about technology developments, trends and issues. TechNews focuses on emerging technologies and other technology news. TechNews service : digests september 2004 till May 2010 Analysis pieces and News combined publish every 2 to 3 month

Open source hardware based sensor platform suitable for human gait identification

Most initiatives about embedded sensing capabilities in computational systems lead to de- vise an ad hoc sensor platform, usually poorly reusable, as a first stage to prepare a data corpus or production prototype. In this paper, an open source hardware platform for sensing is described. This platform was intended to be used in data acquisition for gait identification, and is designed in a way general enough so many other projects could reuse the design to accelerate prototyping. The platform is based on popular open source hardware and software like Arduino and Raspberry Pi using well known languages and libraries. Some experimental results about the throughput of the overall system are reported showing the feasibility of acquiring data from up to 6 sensors with a sampling frequency no less than 118 Hz

Experimental Evaluation of a SIP-Based Home Gateway with Multiple Wireless Interfaces for Domotics Systems

In modern houses, the presence of sensors and actuators is increasing, whilecommunication servicesandentertainment systemshad long since settled into everyday life. The utilization of wireless communication technologies, such as ZigBee, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, is attractive because of their short installation times and low costs. The research is moving towards the integration of the various home appliances and devices into a single domotics system, able to exploit the cooperation among the diverse subsystems and offer the end-user a single multiservice platform. In this scenario, the paper presents the experimental evaluation of a domotics framework centered on a SIP-based home gateway (SHG). While SIP is used to build a common control plane, the SHG is in charge of translating the user commands from and to the specific domotics languages. The analysis has been devoted to assess both the performance of the SHG software framework and the negative effects produced by the simultaneous interference among the three widespread wireless technologies

Enabling environmental fingerprinting with an NFC-powered sensor board

Abstract. In recent times, people have become concerned about their environmental conditions, amid deteriorating global statistics on bad air quality, global warming and UV light exposure. Conventional technologies for reading environmental conditions are expensive, bulky and situated, yet, people are mobile and need portable tools to be aware of their immediate environmental conditions on demand. Smartphones are now widely used, endowed with sensors and wireless communication technologies such as Bluetooth, and Near Field Communication (NFC) for external sensor connectivity, making smartphones a viable tool for fingerprinting the environment. This thesis outlines the design, evaluation and implementation of a mobile-enabled system for environmental data collection using a portable NFC powered sensor board. The name of the system developed in this thesis is the S3 system. The S3 system is a two-tier system which consists of S3 Android application and an online dashboard with a data repository. The S3 Android application is used for collecting and visualising environmental data; temperature, humidity, UV, ambient light, with a smartphone and a credit card-size NFC powered sensor board. The sensor data is then periodically synced to the online data repository. Additional features of the S3 application include automated feedback sampling, introductory tutorial, and user preference settings. The thesis further details the design and implementation process with scenarios, use cases, paper sketches, expert review of sketches, interface mockups, evaluation of prototype with a user study, quantitative and qualitative analysis of user study data, and finally the implementation of the S3 application. The thesis also presents a test run to demonstrate the capabilities of the S3 system as a mobile-enabled solution for crowdsourced environmental fingerprint datasets. To the end user, the work in this thesis provides the S3 application and the NFC powered sensor card as a portable tool for personalised environmental fingerprinting. On the other hand, the intervention in this thesis will have an impact on research since the crowdsourced environmental fingerprint datasets can be valuable datasets for research. As a TEKES project, the solution also provides a proof of concept for further improvement and deployment into the commercial software market

Design of a Customized multipurpose nano-enabled implantable system for in-vivo theranostics

The first part of this paper reviews the current development and key issues on implantable multi-sensor devices for in vivo theranostics. Afterwards, the authors propose an innovative biomedical multisensory system for in vivo biomarker monitoring that could be suitable for customized theranostics applications. At this point, findings suggest that cross-cutting Key Enabling Technologies (KETs) could improve the overall performance of the system given that the convergence of technologies in nanotechnology, biotechnology, micro&nanoelectronics and advanced materials permit the development of new medical devices of small dimensions, using biocompatible materials, and embedding reliable and targeted biosensors, high speed data communication, and even energy autonomy. Therefore, this article deals with new research and market challenges of implantable sensor devices, from the point of view of the pervasive system, and time-to-market. The remote clinical monitoring approach introduced in this paper could be based on an array of biosensors to extract information from the patient. A key contribution of the authors is that the general architecture introduced in this paper would require minor modifications for the final customized bio-implantable medical device