Review of computer vision in intelligent environment design

This paper discusses and compares the use of vision based and non-vision based technologies in developing intelligent environments. By reviewing the related projects that use vision based techniques in intelligent environment design, the achieved functions, technical issues and drawbacks of those projects are discussed and summarized, and the potential solutions for future improvement are proposed, which leads to the prospective direction of my PhD research

First experiences with Personal Networks as an enabling platform for service providers

By developing demonstrators and performing small-scale user trials, we found various opportunities and pitfalls for deploying personal networks (PNs) on a commercial basis. The demonstrators were created using as many as possible legacy devices and proven technologies. They deal with applications in the health sector, home services, tourism, and the transportation sector. This paper describes the various architectures and our experiences with the end users and the technology. We conclude that context awareness, service discovery, and content management are very important in PNs and that a personal network provider role is necessary to realize these functions under the assumptions we made. The PNPay Travel demonstrator suggests that PN service platforms provide an opportunity to develop true trans-sector services

SwarMAV: A Swarm of Miniature Aerial Vehicles

As the MAV (Micro or Miniature Aerial Vehicles) field matures, we expect to see that the platform's degree of autonomy, the information exchange, and the coordination with other manned and unmanned actors, will become at least as crucial as its aerodynamic design. The project described in this paper explores some aspects of a particularly exciting possible avenue of development: an autonomous swarm of MAVs which exploits its inherent reliability (through redundancy), and its ability to exchange information among the members, in order to cope with a dynamically changing environment and achieve its mission. We describe the successful realization of a prototype experimental platform weighing only 75g, and outline a strategy for the automatic design of a suitable controller

VCare: A Personal Emergency Response System to Promote Safe and Independent Living Among Elders Staying by Themselves in Community or Residential Settings

‘Population aging’ is a growing concern for most of us living in the twenty first century, primarily because many of us in the next few years will have a senior person to care for - spending money towards their healthcare expenditures AND/OR having to balance a full-time job with the responsibility of care-giving, travelling from another city to be with this elderly citizen who might be our parent, grand-parent or even community elders. As informal care-givers, if somehow we were able to monitor the day-to-day activities of our elderly dependents, and be alerted when wrong happens to them that would be of great help and lower the care-giving burden considerably. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can certainly help in such a scenario, with tools and techniques that ensure safe living for the individual we are caring for, and save us from a lot of worry by providing us with anytime access into their lives or activities, and as a result check their functional state. However, we should be mindful of the tactics that could be adopted by harm causers to steal data stored in these products and try to curb the associated service costs. In short, we are in need of robust, cost-effective, useful, and secure solutions to help elders in our society to ‘age gracefully’. This work is a little step taken towards that direction. ‘Population aging’ is a growing concern for most of us living in the twenty first century, primarily because many of us in the next few years will have a senior person to care for - spending money towards their healthcare expenditures AND/OR having to balance a full-time job with the responsibility of care-giving, travelling from another city to be with this elderly citizen who might be our parent, grand-parent or even community elders. As informal care-givers, if somehow we were able to monitor the day-to-day activities of our elderly dependents, and be alerted when wrong happens to them that would be of great help and lower the care-giving burden considerably. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can certainly help in such a scenario, with tools and techniques that ensure safe living for the individual we are caring for, and save us from a lot of worry by providing us with anytime access into their lives or activities, and as a result check their functional state. However, we should be mindful of the tactics that could be adopted by harm causers to steal data stored in these products and try to curb the associated service costs. In short, we are in need of robust, cost-effective, useful, and secure solutions to help elders in our society to ‘age gracefully’. This work is a little step taken towards that direction. Advisor: Tadeusz Wysock

Internet of Things-aided Smart Grid: Technologies, Architectures, Applications, Prototypes, and Future Research Directions

Traditional power grids are being transformed into Smart Grids (SGs) to address the issues in existing power system due to uni-directional information flow, energy wastage, growing energy demand, reliability and security. SGs offer bi-directional energy flow between service providers and consumers, involving power generation, transmission, distribution and utilization systems. SGs employ various devices for the monitoring, analysis and control of the grid, deployed at power plants, distribution centers and in consumers' premises in a very large number. Hence, an SG requires connectivity, automation and the tracking of such devices. This is achieved with the help of Internet of Things (IoT). IoT helps SG systems to support various network functions throughout the generation, transmission, distribution and consumption of energy by incorporating IoT devices (such as sensors, actuators and smart meters), as well as by providing the connectivity, automation and tracking for such devices. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on IoT-aided SG systems, which includes the existing architectures, applications and prototypes of IoT-aided SG systems. This survey also highlights the open issues, challenges and future research directions for IoT-aided SG systems

A Configurable Sensor Network Applied to Ambient Assisted Living

The rising older people population has increased the interest in Ambient Assisted Living systems. This article presents a system for monitoring the disabled or older persons developed from an existing surveillance system. The modularity and adaptability characteristics of the system allow an easy adaptation for a different purpose. The proposed system uses a network of sensors capable of motion detection that includes fall warning, identification of persons and a configurable control system which allows its use in different scenarios

Multi-camera and Multi-modal Sensor Fusion, an Architecture Overview

Proceedings of: Forth International Workshop on User-Centric Technologies and applications (CONTEXTS 2010). Valencia, 07-10 September , 2010.This paper outlines an architecture formulti-camera andmulti-modal sensor fusion.We define a high-level architecture in which image sensors like standard color, thermal, and time of flight cameras can be fused with high accuracy location systems based on UWB, Wifi, Bluetooth or RFID technologies. This architecture is specially well-suited for indoor environments, where such heterogeneous sensors usually coexists. The main advantage of such a system is that a combined nonredundant output is provided for all the detected targets. The fused output includes in its simplest form the location of each target, including additional features depending of the sensors involved in the target detection, e.g., location plus thermal information. This way, a surveillance or context-aware system obtains more accurate and complete information than only using one kind of technologyThis work was supported in part by Projects CICYT TIN2008-06742-C02-02/TSI, CICYT TEC2008-06732-C02-02/TEC, SINPROB, CAM CONTEXTS S2009/TIC-1485 and DPS2008-07029-C02-02Publicad

Vehicle Parking Space Locator with Surveillance System (V-Locator)

Vehicle Parking Space Locator with Surveillance System is developed to help drivers to locate available parking space in a parking area using their mobile devices via Bluetooth application. The system will provide information about the location of the parking space as well as the image of the parking area. The objective of the service is to enhance the existing parking system, to provide better service for drivers in searching of available parking space, and to utilize the Bluetooth application in mobile devices as the medium of the services. The service also looks forward in reducing the traffic congestion, high C02 emission, and the drivers' precious time which are derived from parking surveys activities. The methodology is based on the Rapid Application Development (RAD) model, which is the enhancement of waterfall model, since it is the most appropriate model to be used for fast project development and delivery if high quality system at low cost of investment. The service is hope would benefits mobile users and drivers in lowering thier fuel consumption, saving cost of services, and reducing user's time for parking surveys. The system will be integrating Visual Basic.NET with Matlab 7.0 tools. When a client/mobile user requests for available parking space information from the system via Bluetooth application, the system would respond to the request by providing the image of the current parking lot as well as the exact locations information. The parking area would be captured using Visual Basic.NET and the captured images would be processed using Matlab Image Processing Toolbox

FacePET: Enhancing Bystanders\u27 Facial Privacy with Smart Wearables/Internet of Things

Given the availability of cameras in mobile phones, drones and Internet-connected devices, facial privacy has become an area of major interest in the last few years, especially when photos are captured and can be used to identify bystanders’ faces who may have not given consent for these photos to be taken and be identified. Some solutions to protect facial privacy in photos currently exist. However, many of these solutions do not give a choice to bystanders because they rely on algorithms that de-identify photos or protocols to deactivate devices and systems not controlled by bystanders, thereby being dependent on the bystanders’ trust in these systems to protect his/her facial privacy. To address these limitations, we propose FacePET (Facial Privacy Enhancing Technology), a wearable system worn by bystanders and designed to enhance facial privacy. We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of the FacePET and discuss some open research issues