A Low-Cost Tele-Presence Wheelchair System

This paper presents the architecture and implementation of a tele-presence wheelchair system based on tele-presence robot, intelligent wheelchair, and touch screen technologies. The tele-presence wheelchair system consists of a commercial electric wheelchair, an add-on tele-presence interaction module, and a touchable live video image based user interface (called TIUI). The tele-presence interaction module is used to provide video-chatting for an elderly or disabled person with the family members or caregivers, and also captures the live video of an environment for tele-operation and semi-autonomous navigation. The user interface developed in our lab allows an operator to access the system anywhere and directly touch the live video image of the wheelchair to push it as if he/she did it in the presence. This paper also discusses the evaluation of the user experience

Intelligent indexing of crime scene photographs

The Scene of Crime Information System's automatic image-indexing prototype goes beyond extracting keywords and syntactic relations from captions. The semantic information it gathers gives investigators an intuitive, accurate way to search a database of cases for specific photographic evidence. Intelligent, automatic indexing and retrieval of crime scene photographs is one of the main functions of SOCIS, our research prototype developed within the Scene of Crime Information System project. The prototype, now in its final development and evaluation phase, applies advanced natural language processing techniques to text-based image indexing and retrieval to tackle crime investigation needs effectively and efficiently

New Technologies for Sustainable Urban Transport in Europe

In the past few years, the European Commission has financed several projects to examine how new technologies could improve the sustainability of European cities. These technologies concern new public transportation modes such as guided buses to form high capacity networks similar to light rail but at a lower cost and better flexibility, PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) and cybercars (small urban vehicles with fully automatic driving capabilities to be used in carsharing mode, mostly as a complement to mass transport). They also concern private vehicles with technologies which could improve the efficiency of the vehicles as well as their safety (Intelligent Speed Adaptation, Adaptive Cruise >.Control, Stop&Go, Lane Keeping,...) and how these new vehicles can complement mass transport in the form of car-sharing services

INTELLIGENTE TRANSPORT SYSTEMEN ITS EN VERKEERSVEILIGHEID

This report discusses Intelligent Transport Systems (ITS). This generic term is used for a broad range of information-, control- and electronic technology that can be integrated in the road infrastructure and the vehicles themselves, saving lives, time and money bymonitoring and managing traffic flows, reducing conges-tion, avoiding accidents, etc. Because this report was written in the scope of the Policy Research Centre Mobility & Public Works, track Traffic Safety, it focuses on ITS systems from the traffic safety point of view. Within the whole range of ITS systems, two categories can be distinguished: autonomous and cooperative systems. Autonomous systems are all forms of ITS which operate by itself, and do not depend on the cooperation with other vehicles or supporting infrastructure. Example applications are blind spot detection using radar, electronic stability control, dynamic traffic management using variable road signs, emergency call, etc. Cooperative systems are ITS systems based on communication and cooperation, both between vehicles as between vehicles and infrastructure. Example applications are alerting vehicles approaching a traffic jam, exchanging data regarding hazardous road conditions, extended electronic brake light, etc. In some cases, autonomous systems can evolve to autonomous cooperative systems. ISA (Intelligent Speed Adaptation) is an example of this: the dynamic aspect as well as communication with infrastructure (eg Traffic lights, Variable Message Sign (VMS)...) can provide additional road safety. This is the clear link between the two parts of this report. The many ITS applications are an indicator of the high expectations from the government, the academic world and the industry regarding the possibilities made possible by both categories of ITS systems. Therefore, the comprehensive discussion of both of them is the core of this report. The first part of the report covering the autonomous systems treats two aspects: 1. Overview of European projects related to mobility and in particular to road safety 2. Overview for guidelines for the evaluation of ITS projects. Out of the wide range of diverse (autonomous) ITS applications a selection is made; this selection is focused on E Safety Forum and PreVENT. Especially the PreVent research project is interesting because ITS-applications have led to a number of concrete demonstration vehicles that showed - in protected and unprotected surroundings- that these ITS-applications are already technically useful or could be developed into useful products. The component “guidelines for the evaluation of ITS projects” outlines that the government has to have specific evaluation tools if the government has the ambition of using ITS-applications for road safety. Two projects -guidelines for the evaluation of ITS projects- are examined; a third evaluation method is only mentioned because this description shows that a specific targeting of the government can be desirable : 1. TRACE describes the guidelines for the evaluation of ITS projects which are useful for the evaluation of specific ITS-applications. 2. FITS contains Finnish guidelines for the evaluation of ITS project; FIS is an adaptation of methods used for evaluation of transport projects. 3. The third evaluation method for the evaluation of ITS projects is developed in an ongoing European research project, eImpact. eImpact is important because, a specific consultation of stake holders shows that the social importance of some techniques is underestimated. These preliminary results show that an appropriate guiding role for the government could be important. In the second part of this document the cooperative systems are discussed in depth. These systems enable a large number of applications with an important social relevance, both on the level of the environment, mobility and traffic safety. Cooperative systems make it possible to warn drivers in time to avoid collisions (e.g. when approaching the tail of a traffic jam, or when a ghost driver is detected). Hazardous road conditions can be automatically communicated to other drivers (e.g. after the detection of black ice or an oil trail by the ESP). Navigation systems can receive detailed real-time up-dates about the current traffic situation and can take this into account when calculating their routes. When a traffic distortion occurs, traffic centers can immediately take action and can actively influence the way that the traffic will be diverted. Drivers can be notified well in advance about approaching emergency vehicles, and can be directed to yield way in a uniform manner. This is just a small selection from the large number of applications that are made possible because of cooperative ITS systems, but it is very obvious that these systems can make a significant positive contribution to traffic safety. In literature it is estimated that the decrease of accidents with injuries of fatalities will be between 20% and 50% . It is not suprising that ITS systems receive a lot of attention for the moment. On an international level, a number of standards are being established regarding this topic. The International Telecommunications Uniont (ITU), Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), International Organization for Standardization (ISO), Association of Radio Industries and Business (ARIB) and European committee for standardization (CEN) are currently defining standards that describe different aspects of ITS systems. One of the names that is mostly mentioned in literature is the ISO TC204/WG16 Communications Architecture for Land Mobile environment (CALM) standard. It describes a framework that enables transparent (both for the application and the user) continuous communication through different communication media. Besides the innumerable standardization activities, there is a great number of active research projects. On European level, the most important are the i2010 Intelligent Car Initiative, the eSafety Forum, and the COMeSafety, the CVIS, the SAFESPOT, the COOPERS and the SEVECOM project. The i2010 Intelligent Car Initiative is an European initiative with the goal to halve the number of traffic casualties by 2010. The eSafety Forum is an initiative of the European Commission, industry and other stakeholders and targets the acceleration of development and deployment of safety-related ITS systems. The COMeSafety project supports the eSafety Forum on the field of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication. In the CVIS project, attention is given to both technical and non-technical issues, with the main goal to develop the first free and open reference implementation of the CALM architecture. The SAFEST project investigates which data is important for safety applications, and with which algorithmsthis data can be extracted from vehicles and infrastructure. The COOPERS project mainly targets communication between vehicles and dedicated roadside infrastructure. Finally, the SEVECOM project researches security and privacy issues. Besides the European projects, research is also conducted in the United States of America (CICAS and VII projects) and in Japan (AHSRA, VICS, Smartway, internetITS). Besides standardization bodies and governmental organizations, also the industry has a considerable interest in ITS systems. In the scope of their ITS activities, a number of companies are united in national and international organizations. On an international level, the best known names are the Car 2 Car Communication Consortium, and Ertico. The C2C CC unites the large European car manufacturers, and focuses on the development of an open standard for vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications based on the already well established IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard. Ertico is an European multi-sector, public/private partnership with the intended purpose of the development and introduction of ITS systems. On a national level, FlandersDrive and The Telematics Cluster / ITS Belgium are the best known organizations. Despite the worldwide activities regarding (cooperative) ITS systems, there still is no consensus about the wireless technology to be used in such systems. This can be put down to the fact that a large number of suitable technologies exist or are under development. Each technology has its specific advantages and disadvantages, but no single technology is the ideal solution for every ITS application. However, the different candidates can be classified in three distinct categories. The first group contains solutions for Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC), such as the WAVE technology. The second group is made up of several cellular communication networks providing coverage over wide areas. Examples are GPRS (data communication using the GSM network), UMTS (faster then GPRS), WiMAX (even faster then UMTS) and MBWA (similar to WiMAX). The third group consists of digital data broadcast technologies such as RDS (via the current FM radio transmissions, slow), DAB and DMB (via current digital radio transmissions, quicker) and DVB-H (via future digital television transmissions for mobiledevices, quickest). The previous makes it clear that ITS systems are a hot topic right now, and they receive a lot of attention from the academic world, the standardization bodies and the industry. Therefore, it seems like that it is just a matter of time before ITS systems will find their way into the daily live. Due to the large number of suitable technologies for the implementation of cooperative ITS systems, it is very hard to define which role the government has to play in these developments, and which are the next steps to take. These issues were addressed in reports produced by the i2010 Intelligent Car Initiative and the CVIS project. Their state of the art overview revealed that until now, no country has successfully deployed a fully operational ITS system yet. Seven EU countries are the furthest and are already in the deployment phase: Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Finland, Spain and France. These countries are trailed by eight countries which are in the promotion phase: Denmark, Greece, Italy, Austria, Belgium,Norway, the Czech Republic and Poland. Finally, the last ten countries find themselves in the start-up phase: Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Hungary, Portugal, Switzerland, Ireland and Luxembourg. These European reports produced by the i2010 Intelligent Car Initiative and the CVIS project have defined a few policy recommendations which are very relevant for the Belgian and Flemish government. The most important recommendations for the Flemish government are: • Support awareness: research revealed that civilians consider ITS applications useful, but they are not really willing to pay for this technology. Therefore, it is important to convince the general public of the usefulness and the importance of ITS systems. • Fill the gaps: Belgium is situated in the promotion phase. This means that it should focus at identifying the missing stakeholders, and coordinating national and regional ITS activities. Here it is important that the research activities are coordinated in a national and international context to allow transfer of knowledge from one study to the next, as well as the results to be comparable. • Develop a vision: in the scope of ITS systems policies have to be defined regarding a large number of issues. For instance there is the question if ITS users should be educated, meaning that the use of ITS systems should be the subject of the drivers license exam. How will the regulations be for the technical inspection of vehicles equipped with ITS technology? Will ITS systems be deployed on a voluntary base, or will they e.g. be obliged in every new car? Will the services be offered by private companies, by the public authorities, or by a combination of them? Which technology will be used to implement ITS systems? These are just a few of the many questions where the government will have to develop a point of view for. • Policy coordination: ITS systems are a policy subject on an international, national and regional level. It is very important that these policy organizations can collaborate in a coordinated manner. • Iterative approach to policy development: developing policies for this complex matter is not a simple task. This asks for an iterative approach, where policy decisions are continuously refined and adjusted

Overcoming barriers and increasing independence: service robots for elderly and disabled people

This paper discusses the potential for service robots to overcome barriers and increase independence of elderly and disabled people. It includes a brief overview of the existing uses of service robots by disabled and elderly people and advances in technology which will make new uses possible and provides suggestions for some of these new applications. The paper also considers the design and other conditions to be met for user acceptance. It also discusses the complementarity of assistive service robots and personal assistance and considers the types of applications and users for which service robots are and are not suitable

Karektor guru pendidikan khas aliran kemahiran berlandaskan nilai retorik dari perspektif pelajar pendidikan khas masalah pendengaran di Malaysia

Latar Belakang: Pendidikan Khas di Malaysia adalah satu usaha yang berterusan untuk melahirkan insan yang berkemahiran, berpandangan jauh, berupaya, beriman, berdikari, mampu merancang dan menguruskan kehidupan harian serta menyedari potensi diri sendiri yang selaras dengan Falsafah Pendidikan Kebangsaan. Aliran pendidikan teknikal dan vokasional juga tidak dikecualikan pelajar yang mempunyai keperluan khas. Oleh itu, guru pendidikan khas aliran kemahiran harus mempunyai karektor yang istimewa untuk mendidik pelajar golongan ini. Namun begitu, masih belum wujudnya satu model standard guru pendidikan khas terutamanya aliran kemahiran. Objektif: Kajian ini dijalankan untuk mengenal pasti tahap penerapan elemen dan dimensi nilai retorik dalam proses pengajaran dan pembelajaran guru aliran kemahiran bagi pelajar pendidikan khas masalah pendengaran. Keputusan: Dapatan kajian ini menunjukkan penerapan elemen nilai retorik ethos dan logos dalam kalangan guru berada pada tahap tinggi, diikuti dengan pathos pada tahap sederhana. Dapatan kajian juga menunjukkan penerapan nilai retorik bagi kebanyakan dimensi pada tahap tinggi, hanya dimensi perasaan dan visualisasi pada tahap sederhana. Kesimpulan: Umumnyaa, guru pendidikan khas aliran kemahiran telah menerapkan nilai retorik pada tahap yang tinggi. Setiap guru digalak untuk menguasai nilai retorik supaya dapat membantu para pelajar menerokai ilmu pengetahuan yang disampaikan oleh mereka dengan berkesan dan seterusnya memberi impak yang positif terhadap pencapaian pelajar

Whole-Body MPC for a Dynamically Stable Mobile Manipulator

Autonomous mobile manipulation offers a dual advantage of mobility provided by a mobile platform and dexterity afforded by the manipulator. In this paper, we present a whole-body optimal control framework to jointly solve the problems of manipulation, balancing and interaction as one optimization problem for an inherently unstable robot. The optimization is performed using a Model Predictive Control (MPC) approach; the optimal control problem is transcribed at the end-effector space, treating the position and orientation tasks in the MPC planner, and skillfully planning for end-effector contact forces. The proposed formulation evaluates how the control decisions aimed at end-effector tracking and environment interaction will affect the balance of the system in the future. We showcase the advantages of the proposed MPC approach on the example of a ball-balancing robot with a robotic manipulator and validate our controller in hardware experiments for tasks such as end-effector pose tracking and door opening