Future bathroom: A study of user-centred design principles affecting usability, safety and satisfaction in bathrooms for people living with disabilities

Research and development work relating to assistive technology 2010-11 (Department of Health) Presented to Parliament pursuant to Section 22 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 197

Night to Day Algorithm for Video Camera

In this era, technology is something that we depend on every day and had covered a lot of aspect in our life, from daily life to important factors such as safety and security. This research will focus on security technology using the security camera. Security cameras often have day mode and night mode features to keep the image quality in both bright and dark conditions. They are also able to switch between the two modes automatically. This research will focused on night to day switching feature and aims to develop a night to day algorithm for video cameras using the available image sensor information. This prototype algorithm will be tested using MATLAB and build in an application. The application is able to communicate to the camera and perform the switching. The algorithm itself works as designed and can be tuned to perform the switching on different conditions desired by the user

Emerging technologies for learning (volume 1)

Collection of 5 articles on emerging technologies and trend

State of the art of audio- and video based solutions for AAL

Working Group 3. Audio- and Video-based AAL ApplicationsIt is a matter of fact that Europe is facing more and more crucial challenges regarding health and social care due to the demographic change and the current economic context. The recent COVID-19 pandemic has stressed this situation even further, thus highlighting the need for taking action. Active and Assisted Living (AAL) technologies come as a viable approach to help facing these challenges, thanks to the high potential they have in enabling remote care and support. Broadly speaking, AAL can be referred to as the use of innovative and advanced Information and Communication Technologies to create supportive, inclusive and empowering applications and environments that enable older, impaired or frail people to live independently and stay active longer in society. AAL capitalizes on the growing pervasiveness and effectiveness of sensing and computing facilities to supply the persons in need with smart assistance, by responding to their necessities of autonomy, independence, comfort, security and safety. The application scenarios addressed by AAL are complex, due to the inherent heterogeneity of the end-user population, their living arrangements, and their physical conditions or impairment. Despite aiming at diverse goals, AAL systems should share some common characteristics. They are designed to provide support in daily life in an invisible, unobtrusive and user-friendly manner. Moreover, they are conceived to be intelligent, to be able to learn and adapt to the requirements and requests of the assisted people, and to synchronise with their specific needs. Nevertheless, to ensure the uptake of AAL in society, potential users must be willing to use AAL applications and to integrate them in their daily environments and lives. In this respect, video- and audio-based AAL applications have several advantages, in terms of unobtrusiveness and information richness. Indeed, cameras and microphones are far less obtrusive with respect to the hindrance other wearable sensors may cause to one’s activities. In addition, a single camera placed in a room can record most of the activities performed in the room, thus replacing many other non-visual sensors. Currently, video-based applications are effective in recognising and monitoring the activities, the movements, and the overall conditions of the assisted individuals as well as to assess their vital parameters (e.g., heart rate, respiratory rate). Similarly, audio sensors have the potential to become one of the most important modalities for interaction with AAL systems, as they can have a large range of sensing, do not require physical presence at a particular location and are physically intangible. Moreover, relevant information about individuals’ activities and health status can derive from processing audio signals (e.g., speech recordings). Nevertheless, as the other side of the coin, cameras and microphones are often perceived as the most intrusive technologies from the viewpoint of the privacy of the monitored individuals. This is due to the richness of the information these technologies convey and the intimate setting where they may be deployed. Solutions able to ensure privacy preservation by context and by design, as well as to ensure high legal and ethical standards are in high demand. After the review of the current state of play and the discussion in GoodBrother, we may claim that the first solutions in this direction are starting to appear in the literature. A multidisciplinary 4 debate among experts and stakeholders is paving the way towards AAL ensuring ergonomics, usability, acceptance and privacy preservation. The DIANA, PAAL, and VisuAAL projects are examples of this fresh approach. This report provides the reader with a review of the most recent advances in audio- and video-based monitoring technologies for AAL. It has been drafted as a collective effort of WG3 to supply an introduction to AAL, its evolution over time and its main functional and technological underpinnings. In this respect, the report contributes to the field with the outline of a new generation of ethical-aware AAL technologies and a proposal for a novel comprehensive taxonomy of AAL systems and applications. Moreover, the report allows non-technical readers to gather an overview of the main components of an AAL system and how these function and interact with the end-users. The report illustrates the state of the art of the most successful AAL applications and functions based on audio and video data, namely (i) lifelogging and self-monitoring, (ii) remote monitoring of vital signs, (iii) emotional state recognition, (iv) food intake monitoring, activity and behaviour recognition, (v) activity and personal assistance, (vi) gesture recognition, (vii) fall detection and prevention, (viii) mobility assessment and frailty recognition, and (ix) cognitive and motor rehabilitation. For these application scenarios, the report illustrates the state of play in terms of scientific advances, available products and research project. The open challenges are also highlighted. The report ends with an overview of the challenges, the hindrances and the opportunities posed by the uptake in real world settings of AAL technologies. In this respect, the report illustrates the current procedural and technological approaches to cope with acceptability, usability and trust in the AAL technology, by surveying strategies and approaches to co-design, to privacy preservation in video and audio data, to transparency and explainability in data processing, and to data transmission and communication. User acceptance and ethical considerations are also debated. Finally, the potentials coming from the silver economy are overviewed.publishedVersio

Visual Privacy Protection Methods: A Survey

Recent advances in computer vision technologies have made possible the development of intelligent monitoring systems for video surveillance and ambient-assisted living. By using this technology, these systems are able to automatically interpret visual data from the environment and perform tasks that would have been unthinkable years ago. These achievements represent a radical improvement but they also suppose a new threat to individual’s privacy. The new capabilities of such systems give them the ability to collect and index a huge amount of private information about each individual. Next-generation systems have to solve this issue in order to obtain the users’ acceptance. Therefore, there is a need for mechanisms or tools to protect and preserve people’s privacy. This paper seeks to clarify how privacy can be protected in imagery data, so as a main contribution a comprehensive classification of the protection methods for visual privacy as well as an up-to-date review of them are provided. A survey of the existing privacy-aware intelligent monitoring systems and a valuable discussion of important aspects of visual privacy are also provided.This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under project “Sistema de visión para la monitorización de la actividad de la vida diaria en el hogar” (TIN2010-20510-C04-02) and by the European Commission under project “caring4U - A study on people activity in private spaces: towards a multisensor network that meets privacy requirements” (PIEF-GA-2010-274649). José Ramón Padilla López and Alexandros Andre Chaaraoui acknowledge financial support by the Conselleria d'Educació, Formació i Ocupació of the Generalitat Valenciana (fellowship ACIF/2012/064 and ACIF/2011/160 respectively)

Innovations Around Mobile Applications: Scope for Indian Developers

This paper explores innovations around mobile applications, globally, and brings out the scope for monetization of these trends, by Indian Application Developers. The paper is based on qualitative research and utilizes Content Analysis Technique for tabulating and reporting the data. A thorough literature review has been conducted to understand the innovations around mobile applications globally and to identify the top 5 categories of mobile applications. These categories serve as variables for understanding the scope for Indian mobile application developers. Data on Indian Mobile application market has been sourced from mass media: Top 3 English newspapers (Indian) and 6 online sources. Recommendations for Indian developers have been generated on the basis on data which was reported under 5 identified categories of mobile applications. Scope for Indian Mobile application developers is in (but not limited to) the following areas; Developing cloud enabled applications, developing customised Indian applications, working on innovations based on global acceptability through multi-language apps., synchronising data with backend systems and addressing security threats, reducing costs through prudent locations and newer API’s (Application Programming Interface), beta testing applications and appropriate keyword tagging for marketing and making applications oriented towards customer delight so that in the process of diffusion of the innovation, the application becomes an integral part of the customer’s life. Methodical content analysis brings out the scope for Indian application developers and offers them valuable insights on monetization tactics. Since the findings are based on published data from Indian Mass Media, it makes the paper very contemporary and the recommendations very implementable for the industry. Academicians working in this area too, will also find an avenue for further exploration. This research work is distinctive because of the lack of scholarly studies in this area, especially in the Indian context. Data from mass media and use of content analysis – a widely used qualitative analytic method for a scholarly study, increases its value by making the work recent, contemporary and worthy of further scholarly explorations

5G Outlook – Innovations and Applications

5G Outlook - Innovations and Applications is a collection of the recent research and development in the area of the Fifth Generation Mobile Technology (5G), the future of wireless communications. Plenty of novel ideas and knowledge of the 5G are presented in this book as well as divers applications from health science to business modeling. The authors of different chapters contributed from various countries and organizations. The chapters have also been presented at the 5th IEEE 5G Summit held in Aalborg on July 1, 2016. The book starts with a comprehensive introduction on 5G and its need and requirement. Then millimeter waves as a promising spectrum to 5G technology is discussed. The book continues with the novel and inspiring ideas for the future wireless communication usage and network. Further, some technical issues in signal processing and network design for 5G are presented. Finally, the book ends up with different applications of 5G in distinct areas. Topics widely covered in this book are: • 5G technology from past to present to the future• Millimeter- waves and their characteristics• Signal processing and network design issues for 5G• Applications, business modeling and several novel ideas for the future of 5

Everyday patterns in lifelong learners to build personal learning ecologies

Tabuenca, B., Ternier, S., & Specht, M. (2012). Everyday patterns in lifelong learners to build personal learning ecologies. In M. Specht, J. Multisilta, & M. Sharples (Eds.), Proceedings of the 11th World Conference on Mobile and Contextual Learning 2012 (pp. 86-93). October, 16-18, 2012, Helsinki, Finland.This article presents the results from a questionnaire filled out by 147 lifelong learners. The primary aim of the questionnaire is to analyse learning practices of adults, and to recognize patterns of lifelong learners in order to support them with technology. These patterns capture the context in which lifelong learners are more willing to learn, that is, the day of the week, duration, location, activity being performed, type of device being used, way to interact with their devices and how these aspects can affect when an adult student takes the initiative to learn. Moreover, this article examines previous publications on surveys, questionnaires and information collected with the same objective, to corroborate and contrast the findings. The contribution of this paper is identifying and describing patterns in which lifelong learners are more willing to build personal learning ecologies when supported by mobile devices.Open University of The Netherlands, CELSTEC, NELL