Real-Time Indoor Movement Animation System In 3D Environment

In the era of smart homes, activities of daily living (ADLs) gains more and more attentions, ADLs can be used to present an individual’s living status, gauge an individual’s level of functioning and estimate his/her health condition. With smart devices, our daily motions can be captured and mapped into digital data, these raw data can be analyzed so that activities can be recognized. Although activities can be determined, they’re still represented as digital data, it would be boring, hard and time-consuming to read and understand such data. A system that could provide real-time monitoring and visualizing of an individual’s activities without privacy issue will be an urgent requirement for the non-technical, especially for nurses, doctors and family members, in order to observe people in need and in turn provide better nursing services. For this project, I present a real-time animation system for human movements in an 3D indoor environment with simultaneous tracking of an individual. This system collects and recognizes activities only through a smart phone and animates these movement behaviors in a 3D environment. The indoor activities are recognized by processing the data combination of magnetic field, acceleration and Wi-Fi signals. With this system, people can easily see the daily movement information of an individual and where that individual is located at a specific time. The purpose of this system is to provide a cost-effective and convenient healthcare service for people in need

Building a person home behavior model based on data from smart house sensors 2015

Dissertação para a obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica Ramo de EnergiaO propósito deste trabalho é construir um modelo baseado em informação captada por sensores e câmaras em uma casa onde viva somente uma pessoa. A primeira parte do trabalho consistiu em reunir informação que ajuda-se a perceber o que já tinha sido feito neste âmbito por outros engenheiros. Na realização deste trabalho, a parte que se revelou mais acessível foi a que envolveu a procura de informação sobre os diferentes métodos a usar no sistema, tais como Lógica Fuzzy, Redes Neuronais ou o método Monte Carlo via Cadeias de Markov. Em contrapartida, investigar as diferentes maneiras de guardar a informação provou ser mais desafiante. Foi praticamente impossível encontrar informação sobre os métodos usados para guardar informação recolhida pelos sensores e câmaras. A maior parte das vezes, os engenheiros não mencionavam a parte da informação relativa a este aspecto, simplesmente apresentavam os seus resultados e as suas conclusões. Além disso, quando o uso de informação era mencionada, a mesma relacionava-se com informação online, ou só informação já recolhida por sensores e câmaras, sem quaisquer detalhes. Era espectável encontrar mais informação sobre os métodos de guardar informação, mais específica, como a informação recolhida era ligada entre si e como o sistema iria interpretá-la e que resposta iria dar. Devido à falta de informação sobre como armazenar a informação recolhida, ficou decidido que se teria de assumir uma maneira para o fazer e com isso construir o modelo. Este modelo será referido neste documento. Devido a problemas relacionados com a parte da programação e com a falta de tempo, foi impossível construir o modelo usando os, considerados, melhores métodos. Não obstante, foi possível decidir as melhores opções para construir o modelo, assim como algumas formas de o fazer. Foi decidido a maneira como armazenar informação, o protocolo de informação a usar e o método que irá inferir com as actividades e comportamentos do habitante.Abstract:The purpose of this work has been to build a model based on data collected from sensors and cameras in a house with only one inhabitant. The first part of the work consisted of gathering research in order to try to understand what was already made by other engineers. One part stood out to be less complicated, as it evolved around finding information about the different methods to use with a system like Fuzzy Logic, Neural Network or Markov Chain Monte Carlo. However, investigating different ways to store information proved to be more challenging. It was pretty much impossible to get some information about the way people store the information collected from sensors and cameras. Most of the time, other engineers never mention the part related with the data, but simply presented the results and then their conclusion. Moreover, when the use of data was mentioned, it was simply related to online data, or just data which was stored after being collected from sensors and cameras, without any further detail. It was expected to find more information about the way the data was used, more specific information, covering how all the information was connected to each other, and how the system would interpret all the data and the responses. Since the lack of information related with the data, it was decided to assume a way to store the information and with that, a model was built. This model will be referred to within this paper. Due to problems with programming and lack of time, it was impossible to build a model by using the best methods. Notwithstanding, it was possible to decide all the best options to use to build the model, along with some ways to do it. It was decided the way to store information, the Communication Protocol to use and the method to infer with the inhabitant activities and behaviors

The Federal Conference on Intelligent Processing Equipment

Research and development projects involving intelligent processing equipment within the following U.S. agencies are addressed: Department of Agriculture, Department of Commerce, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Emergency Management Agency, NASA, National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation

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

Distributed Computing and Monitoring Technologies for Older Patients

This book summarizes various approaches for the automatic detection of health threats to older patients at home living alone. The text begins by briefly describing those who would most benefit from healthcare supervision. The book then summarizes possible scenarios for monitoring an older patient at home, deriving the common functional requirements for monitoring technology. Next, the work identifies the state of the art of technological monitoring approaches that are practically applicable to geriatric patients. A survey is presented on a range of such interdisciplinary fields as smart homes, telemonitoring, ambient intelligence, ambient assisted living, gerontechnology, and aging-in-place technology. The book discusses relevant experimental studies, highlighting the application of sensor fusion, signal processing and machine learning techniques. Finally, the text discusses future challenges, offering a number of suggestions for further research directions

Central monitoring system for ambient assisted living

Smart homes for aged care enable the elderly to stay in their own homes longer. By means of various types of ambient and wearable sensors information is gathered on people living in smart homes for aged care. This information is then processed to determine the activities of daily living (ADL) and provide vital information to carers. Many examples of smart homes for aged care can be found in literature, however, little or no evidence can be found with respect to interoperability of various sensors and devices along with associated functions. One key element with respect to interoperability is the central monitoring system in a smart home. This thesis analyses and presents key functions and requirements of a central monitoring system. The outcomes of this thesis may benefit developers of smart homes for aged care

Exploring the Landscape of Ubiquitous In-home Health Monitoring: A Comprehensive Survey

Ubiquitous in-home health monitoring systems have become popular in recent years due to the rise of digital health technologies and the growing demand for remote health monitoring. These systems enable individuals to increase their independence by allowing them to monitor their health from the home and by allowing more control over their well-being. In this study, we perform a comprehensive survey on this topic by reviewing a large number of literature in the area. We investigate these systems from various aspects, namely sensing technologies, communication technologies, intelligent and computing systems, and application areas. Specifically, we provide an overview of in-home health monitoring systems and identify their main components. We then present each component and discuss its role within in-home health monitoring systems. In addition, we provide an overview of the practical use of ubiquitous technologies in the home for health monitoring. Finally, we identify the main challenges and limitations based on the existing literature and provide eight recommendations for potential future research directions toward the development of in-home health monitoring systems. We conclude that despite extensive research on various components needed for the development of effective in-home health monitoring systems, the development of effective in-home health monitoring systems still requires further investigation.Comment: 35 pages, 5 figure

Mechatronic Systems

Mechatronics, the synergistic blend of mechanics, electronics, and computer science, has evolved over the past twenty five years, leading to a novel stage of engineering design. By integrating the best design practices with the most advanced technologies, mechatronics aims at realizing high-quality products, guaranteeing at the same time a substantial reduction of time and costs of manufacturing. Mechatronic systems are manifold and range from machine components, motion generators, and power producing machines to more complex devices, such as robotic systems and transportation vehicles. With its twenty chapters, which collect contributions from many researchers worldwide, this book provides an excellent survey of recent work in the field of mechatronics with applications in various fields, like robotics, medical and assistive technology, human-machine interaction, unmanned vehicles, manufacturing, and education. We would like to thank all the authors who have invested a great deal of time to write such interesting chapters, which we are sure will be valuable to the readers. Chapters 1 to 6 deal with applications of mechatronics for the development of robotic systems. Medical and assistive technologies and human-machine interaction systems are the topic of chapters 7 to 13.Chapters 14 and 15 concern mechatronic systems for autonomous vehicles. Chapters 16-19 deal with mechatronics in manufacturing contexts. Chapter 20 concludes the book, describing a method for the installation of mechatronics education in schools