Voice-enabled smart home modules

The bachelor thesis aims to construct several electrical circuits of development board, sensors and lights and develop voice-enabled smart home modules. The first step design a hardware solution and the physical implementation of individual sensors and lights with development boards. As the next step, the development boards are programmed and built engine as a software environment for data communication, data storage and voice-enabled modules. Furthermore, a VoiceKit is connected to the engine to allow a user to control modules by voice. The central part of the project is a web page visualizing all states of components, listed voice commands, currently uttered user commands, and graph data from sensors. The outcome of this project is a functional example use of modules in a basic smart home.ObhájenoThe bachelor thesis aims to construct several electrical circuits of development board, sensors and lights and develop voice-enabled smart home modules. The first step design a hardware solution and the physical implementation of individual sensors and lights with development boards. As the next step, the development boards are programmed and built engine as a software environment for data communication, data storage and voice-enabled modules. Furthermore, a VoiceKit is connected to the engine to allow a user to control modules by voice. The central part of the project is a web page visualizing all states of components, listed voice commands, currently uttered user commands, and graph data from sensors. The outcome of this project is a functional example use of modules in a basic smart home

Development of Early Social Interactions in Infants Exposed to Artificial Intelligence from Birth

Research suggests that technology density in a home may change interactions parents and infants in the earliest months of life. This study explored how the use of smart baby technology influenced parental perceptions of development and early social interactions. A qualitative, case methodology was used. The participants in this study were one family with newborn twins. Data was collected over a six month period using journals, field notes, and observations. Thematic coding of these materials was used to answer the questions of the study. Results suggest that use of smart technology supported the emerging parenting skills and allowed the parents to confidently establish care interactions

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

Fog Computing in Medical Internet-of-Things: Architecture, Implementation, and Applications

In the era when the market segment of Internet of Things (IoT) tops the chart in various business reports, it is apparently envisioned that the field of medicine expects to gain a large benefit from the explosion of wearables and internet-connected sensors that surround us to acquire and communicate unprecedented data on symptoms, medication, food intake, and daily-life activities impacting one's health and wellness. However, IoT-driven healthcare would have to overcome many barriers, such as: 1) There is an increasing demand for data storage on cloud servers where the analysis of the medical big data becomes increasingly complex, 2) The data, when communicated, are vulnerable to security and privacy issues, 3) The communication of the continuously collected data is not only costly but also energy hungry, 4) Operating and maintaining the sensors directly from the cloud servers are non-trial tasks. This book chapter defined Fog Computing in the context of medical IoT. Conceptually, Fog Computing is a service-oriented intermediate layer in IoT, providing the interfaces between the sensors and cloud servers for facilitating connectivity, data transfer, and queryable local database. The centerpiece of Fog computing is a low-power, intelligent, wireless, embedded computing node that carries out signal conditioning and data analytics on raw data collected from wearables or other medical sensors and offers efficient means to serve telehealth interventions. We implemented and tested an fog computing system using the Intel Edison and Raspberry Pi that allows acquisition, computing, storage and communication of the various medical data such as pathological speech data of individuals with speech disorders, Phonocardiogram (PCG) signal for heart rate estimation, and Electrocardiogram (ECG)-based Q, R, S detection.Comment: 29 pages, 30 figures, 5 tables. Keywords: Big Data, Body Area Network, Body Sensor Network, Edge Computing, Fog Computing, Medical Cyberphysical Systems, Medical Internet-of-Things, Telecare, Tele-treatment, Wearable Devices, Chapter in Handbook of Large-Scale Distributed Computing in Smart Healthcare (2017), Springe