335 research outputs found

    Experimental study of the stress level at the workplace using an smart testbed of wireless sensor networks and ambient intelligence techniques

    Get PDF
    "Natural and artificial computation in engineering and medical applications : 5th International Work-Conference on the Interplay Between Natural and Artificial Computation, IWINAC 2013, Mallorca, Spain, June 10-14, 2013. Proceedings, Part II", ISBN 978-364238621-3This paper combines techniques of ambient intelligence and wireless sensor networks with the objective of obtain important conclusions to increase the quality of life of people. In particular, we oriented our study to the stress at the workplace, because stress is a leading cause of illness and disease. This article presents a wireless sensor network obtaining information of the environment, a pulse sensor obtaining hear rate values and a complete data analysis applying techniques of ambient intelligence to predict stress from these environment variables and people attributes. Results show promise on the identification of stressful situations as well as stress inference through the use of predictive algorithms(undefined

    Tracking Context-Aware Well-Being through Intelligent Environments

    Get PDF
    The growth of personal sensors and the ability to sensorize attributes connected with the physical beings and environments are increasing. Initiatives such as Internet of Things (IoT)) aim to connect devices and people through communication channels in order to automate and fuel interaction. Targeted approaches can be found on the Smart Cities projects which use the IoT to gather data from people and attributes related to city management. Though good for management of new cities, well-being should as well be of principal importance. It regards users higher than infrastructure and managerial data. Taking lessons from ergonomic studies, health studies and user habits it is possible to track and monitor user daily living. Moreover, the link between user living conditions and sparse events such as illness, indispositions can be tracked to well-being data through autonomous services. Such application is detailed in the approach categorized by this article and the research presente

    Exploring Computing Continuum in IoT Systems: Sensing, Communicating and Processing at the Network Edge

    Get PDF
    As Internet of Things (IoT), originally comprising of only a few simple sensing devices, reaches 34 billion units by the end of 2020, they cannot be defined as merely monitoring sensors anymore. IoT capabilities have been improved in recent years as relatively large internal computation and storage capacity are becoming a commodity. In the early days of IoT, processing and storage were typically performed in cloud. New IoT architectures are able to perform complex tasks directly on-device, thus enabling the concept of an extended computational continuum. Real-time critical scenarios e.g. autonomous vehicles sensing, area surveying or disaster rescue and recovery require all the actors involved to be coordinated and collaborate without human interaction to a common goal, sharing data and resources, even in intermittent networks covered areas. This poses new problems in distributed systems, resource management, device orchestration,as well as data processing. This work proposes a new orchestration and communication framework, namely CContinuum, designed to manage resources in heterogeneous IoT architectures across multiple application scenarios. This work focuses on two key sustainability macroscenarios: (a) environmental sensing and awareness, and (b) electric mobility support. In the first case a mechanism to measure air quality over a long period of time for different applications at global scale (3 continents 4 countries) is introduced. The system has been developed in-house from the sensor design to the mist-computing operations performed by the nodes. In the second scenario, a technique to transmit large amounts of fine-time granularity battery data from a moving vehicle to a control center is proposed jointly with the ability of allocating tasks on demand within the computing continuum

    The NASA SBIR product catalog

    Get PDF
    The purpose of this catalog is to assist small business firms in making the community aware of products emerging from their efforts in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. It contains descriptions of some products that have advanced into Phase 3 and others that are identified as prospective products. Both lists of products in this catalog are based on information supplied by NASA SBIR contractors in responding to an invitation to be represented in this document. Generally, all products suggested by the small firms were included in order to meet the goals of information exchange for SBIR results. Of the 444 SBIR contractors NASA queried, 137 provided information on 219 products. The catalog presents the product information in the technology areas listed in the table of contents. Within each area, the products are listed in alphabetical order by product name and are given identifying numbers. Also included is an alphabetical listing of the companies that have products described. This listing cross-references the product list and provides information on the business activity of each firm. In addition, there are three indexes: one a list of firms by states, one that lists the products according to NASA Centers that managed the SBIR projects, and one that lists the products by the relevant Technical Topics utilized in NASA's annual program solicitation under which each SBIR project was selected

    SwellFit: Developing A Wearable Sensor for Monitoring Peripheral Edema

    Get PDF
    Peripheral edema is a swelling of the legs, feet, or hands due to the accumulation of excessive fluid in the tissues. For patients with some chronic diseases, peripheral edema is a crucial indicator of onset or exacerbation of the condition. Thus, early detection of peripheral edema is important for timely diagnosis of associated diseases. However, existing techniques for edema assessment are a subjective measurement for which a human operator estimates the amount of swelling using a tape measure or by pressing the swollen area with the tip of an index finger. As a systematic approach to assessing peripheral edema, we develop SwellFit, an experimental prototype of a novel wearable technology that monitors peripheral edema by tracking changes in ankle curvature. Through a series of proof-of-concept experiments, we demonstrate that SwellFit detects ankle swelling even in the presence of substantial noise in the raw sensor readings

    Multisensor Data Fusion in Pervasive Artificial Intelligence Systems

    Get PDF
    Intelligent systems designed to manage smart environments exploit numerous sensing and actuating devices, pervasively deployed so as to remain invisible to users and subtly learn their preferences and satisfy their needs. Nowadays, such systems are constantly evolving and becoming ever more complex, so it is increasingly difficult to develop them successfully. A possible solution to this problem might lie in delegating certain decisions to the machines themselves, making them more autonomous and able to self-configure and self-manage. This work presents a multi-tier architecture for a complete pervasive system capable of understanding the state of the surrounding environment, as well as using this knowledge to decide what actions should be performed to provide the best possible environmental conditions for end-users, in line with the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) paradigm. To achieve such high-level goals, the system has to effectively merge and analyze heterogeneous data collected by multiple sensors, pervasively deployed in a smart environment. To this end, the proposed system includes a context-aware, self-optimizing, adaptive module for sensor data fusion. Contextual information is leveraged in the fusion process, so as to increase the accuracy of inference and hence decision making in a dynamically changing environment. Additionally, two self-optimization modules are responsible for dynamically determining the subset of sensors to use, finding an optimal trade-off to minimize energy consumption and maximize sensing accuracy. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated with the application scenario of user activity recognition in an AmI system managing a smart home environment. In order to increase the resilience of the system to highly uncertain and unreliable information, the architecture is enriched by a filtering module to pre-process raw data coming from lower levels, before feeding them to the data fusion and reasoning modules in the higher levels.Intelligent systems designed to manage smart environments exploit numerous sensing and actuating devices, pervasively deployed so as to remain invisible to users and subtly learn their preferences and satisfy their needs. Nowadays, such systems are constantly evolving and becoming ever more complex, so it is increasingly difficult to develop them successfully. A possible solution to this problem might lie in delegating certain decisions to the machines themselves, making them more autonomous and able to self-configure and self-manage. This work presents a multi-tier architecture for a complete pervasive system capable of understanding the state of the surrounding environment, as well as using this knowledge to decide what actions should be performed to provide the best possible environmental conditions for end-users, in line with the Ambient Intelligence (AmI) paradigm. To achieve such high-level goals, the system has to effectively merge and analyze heterogeneous data collected by multiple sensors, pervasively deployed in a smart environment. To this end, the proposed system includes a context-aware, self-optimizing, adaptive module for sensor data fusion. Contextual information is leveraged in the fusion process, so as to increase the accuracy of inference and hence decision making in a dynamically changing environment. Additionally, two self-optimization modules are responsible for dynamically determining the subset of sensors to use, finding an optimal trade-off to minimize energy consumption and maximize sensing accuracy. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is demonstrated with the application scenario of user activity recognition in an AmI system managing a smart home environment. In order to increase the resilience of the system to highly uncertain and unreliable information, the architecture is enriched by a filtering module to pre-process raw data coming from lower levels, before feeding them to the data fusion and reasoning modules in the higher levels

    Building the Hyperconnected Society- Internet of Things Research and Innovation Value Chains, Ecosystems and Markets

    Get PDF
    This book aims to provide a broad overview of various topics of Internet of Things (IoT), ranging from research, innovation and development priorities to enabling technologies, nanoelectronics, cyber-physical systems, architecture, interoperability and industrial applications. All this is happening in a global context, building towards intelligent, interconnected decision making as an essential driver for new growth and co-competition across a wider set of markets. It is intended to be a standalone book in a series that covers the Internet of Things activities of the IERC – Internet of Things European Research Cluster from research to technological innovation, validation and deployment.The book builds on the ideas put forward by the European Research Cluster on the Internet of Things Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda, and presents global views and state of the art results on the challenges facing the research, innovation, development and deployment of IoT in future years. The concept of IoT could disrupt consumer and industrial product markets generating new revenues and serving as a growth driver for semiconductor, networking equipment, and service provider end-markets globally. This will create new application and product end-markets, change the value chain of companies that creates the IoT technology and deploy it in various end sectors, while impacting the business models of semiconductor, software, device, communication and service provider stakeholders. The proliferation of intelligent devices at the edge of the network with the introduction of embedded software and app-driven hardware into manufactured devices, and the ability, through embedded software/hardware developments, to monetize those device functions and features by offering novel solutions, could generate completely new types of revenue streams. Intelligent and IoT devices leverage software, software licensing, entitlement management, and Internet connectivity in ways that address many of the societal challenges that we will face in the next decade

    Building the Hyperconnected Society- Internet of Things Research and Innovation Value Chains, Ecosystems and Markets

    Get PDF
    This book aims to provide a broad overview of various topics of Internet of Things (IoT), ranging from research, innovation and development priorities to enabling technologies, nanoelectronics, cyber-physical systems, architecture, interoperability and industrial applications. All this is happening in a global context, building towards intelligent, interconnected decision making as an essential driver for new growth and co-competition across a wider set of markets. It is intended to be a standalone book in a series that covers the Internet of Things activities of the IERC – Internet of Things European Research Cluster from research to technological innovation, validation and deployment.The book builds on the ideas put forward by the European Research Cluster on the Internet of Things Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda, and presents global views and state of the art results on the challenges facing the research, innovation, development and deployment of IoT in future years. The concept of IoT could disrupt consumer and industrial product markets generating new revenues and serving as a growth driver for semiconductor, networking equipment, and service provider end-markets globally. This will create new application and product end-markets, change the value chain of companies that creates the IoT technology and deploy it in various end sectors, while impacting the business models of semiconductor, software, device, communication and service provider stakeholders. The proliferation of intelligent devices at the edge of the network with the introduction of embedded software and app-driven hardware into manufactured devices, and the ability, through embedded software/hardware developments, to monetize those device functions and features by offering novel solutions, could generate completely new types of revenue streams. Intelligent and IoT devices leverage software, software licensing, entitlement management, and Internet connectivity in ways that address many of the societal challenges that we will face in the next decade

    Building the Future Internet through FIRE

    Get PDF
    The Internet as we know it today is the result of a continuous activity for improving network communications, end user services, computational processes and also information technology infrastructures. The Internet has become a critical infrastructure for the human-being by offering complex networking services and end-user applications that all together have transformed all aspects, mainly economical, of our lives. Recently, with the advent of new paradigms and the progress in wireless technology, sensor networks and information systems and also the inexorable shift towards everything connected paradigm, first as known as the Internet of Things and lately envisioning into the Internet of Everything, a data-driven society has been created. In a data-driven society, productivity, knowledge, and experience are dependent on increasingly open, dynamic, interdependent and complex Internet services. The challenge for the Internet of the Future design is to build robust enabling technologies, implement and deploy adaptive systems, to create business opportunities considering increasing uncertainties and emergent systemic behaviors where humans and machines seamlessly cooperate
    corecore