A bluetooth wireless network infrastructure for multimedia guidebooks on mobile computing devices

This paper describes the implementation of a Bluetooth Village Guide Book (VGB) scenario for use in the Kelvin Grove Urban Village located in Brisbane, Australia. An Information Point Station Network (IPSN) was developed, along with software for two types of mobile computing devices. The implementation consists of several Information Point Stations (IPSs) placed at locations of significance, with access to information items on a centralized server. Once registered, the user is given the opportunity to experience context-aware information on demand and in various multimedia formats. These information items are selected by the user, either by way of a menu system appearing on their mobile computing device or a more intuitive pointer-tag system. Information items are then ‘beamed’ via Bluetooth to the user’s mobile computing device for the user to view The implementation was found to be successful and was tested with multiple users accessing information items from a given IPS as well as multiple IPSs attached to the centralized server. Still, there is further work to be done on the VBG software, the user registration system and on creating an embedded solution for the individual Information Point Stations

A Mobile ECG Monitoring System with Context Collection

An objective of a health process is one where patients can stay healthy with the support of expert medical advice when they need it, at any location and any time. An associated aim would be the development of a system which places increased emphasis on preventative measures as a first point of contact with the patient. This research is a step along the road towards this type of preventative healthcare for cardiac patients. It seeks to develop a smart mobile ECG monitoring system that requests and records context information about what is happening around the subject when an arrhythmia event occurs. Context information about the subject’s activities of daily living will, it is hoped, provide an enriched data set for clinicians and so improve clinical decision making. As a first step towards a mobile cardiac wellness guidelines system, the focus of this work is to develop a system that can receive bio-signals wirelessly, analyzing and storing the bio-signal in a handheld device and can collect context information when there are significant changes in bio-signs. For this purpose the author will use a low cost development environment to program a state of the art wireless prototype on a handheld computer that detects and responds to changes in the heart rate as calculated form the interval between successive heart beats. Although the general approach take in this work could be applied to a wide range of bio-signals, the research will focus on ECG signals. The pieces of the system are, A wireless receiver, data collection and storage module An efficient real time ECG beat detection algorithm A rule based (Event-Condition-Action) interactive system A simple user interface, which can request additional information form the user. A selection of real-time ECG detection algorithms have been investigated and one algorithm was implemented in MATLAB [110] and then in Java [142] for this project. In order to collect ECG signals (and in principle any signals) the generalised data collection architecture has also been developed utilizing Java [142] and Bluetooth [5] technology. This architecture uses an implementation of the abstract factory pattern [91] to ensure that the communication channel can be changed conveniently. Another core part of this project is a “wellness” guideline based on Event-Condition-Action (E-C-A) [68] production rule approach that originated in active databases. The work also focuses on design of a guideline based expert system which an E-C-A based implementation will be fully event driven using the Java programming language. Based on the author’s experience and the literature review, some important issues in mobile healthcare along with the corresponding reasons, consequences and possible solutions will be presented

Modelling mobile health systems: an application of augmented MDA for the extended healthcare enterprise

Mobile health systems can extend the enterprise computing system of the healthcare provider by bringing services to the patient any time and anywhere. We propose a model-driven design and development methodology for the development of the m-health components in such extended enterprise computing systems. The methodology applies a model-driven design and development approach augmented with formal validation and verification to address quality and correctness and to support model transformation. Recent work on modelling applications from the healthcare domain is reported. One objective of this work is to explore and elaborate the proposed methodology. At the University of Twente we are developing m-health systems based on Body Area Networks (BANs). One specialization of the generic BAN is the health BAN, which incorporates a set of devices and associated software components to provide some set of health-related services. A patient will have a personalized instance of the health BAN customized to their current set of needs. A health professional interacts with their\ud patients¿ BANs via a BAN Professional System. The set of deployed BANs are supported by a server. We refer to this distributed system as the BAN System. The BAN system extends the enterprise computing system of the healthcare provider. Development of such systems requires a sound software engineering approach and this is what we explore with the new methodology. The methodology is illustrated with reference to recent modelling activities targeted at real implementations. In the context of the Awareness project BAN implementations will be trialled in a number of clinical settings including epilepsy management and management of chronic pain

VOCALS : Beskrivelse av demonstratoren

-Rapporten beskriver en demonstrator som er utviklet som et enkelt eksempel på et multimodalt brukergrensesnitt, hvor fokus i stor grad ligger på bruk av tale for interaksjon. Demonstratoren lar brukeren kombinere penn og tale som input-modaliteter.  Demonstratoren er utviklet basert på en distribuert klient/tjener-arkitektur. Klienten kjører på en mobil terminal under Pocket PC 2003, mens tjeneren kjører på en PC med Linux. Applikasjonen som er valgt for formålet er et enkelt system for turistinformasjon i Trondheim. Rapporten beskriver de to sentrale funksjonalitetene som behøves for å realisere applikasjonen, henholdsvis en løsning for håndtering av kart på en mobil terminal og en talegjenkjenner egnet for distribuert prosessering. Programvaren og metodene som er brukt beskrives, sammen med en detaljert veiledning for oppsett og bruk av demonstratoren

XenITH: Xen in the Hand

Usability and portability have been key commercial drivers for increasingly capable handheld devices, which have been enabled by advances in Moore’s Law and well as in wireless systems. The nature of such devices makes them extremely personal, and yet they offer an untapped resource for new forms of peer-to-peer and cooperative communications relaying. Taking advantage of such capabilities requires concurrent resource control of the handheld’s computational and communications capacities. Virtualization platforms, such as the Xen system, have opened the possibility of multiplexing a handheld device in useful and unobtrusive ways, as personal applications can be used while additional services such as decentralized communications are also in operation. The purpose of this project is to experimentally demonstrate the ability of modern smartphone units to support a programmable network environment. We attempt to validate the system with a series of measurement experiments which demonstrate concurrent use of two operating systems, each using computational and network resources, in two virtual machines. Moreover, we demonstrate an acceptable level of user performance while maintaining a MANET using a programmable network router

Handheld mapping and data capture with NYC Dept of Finance

The New York City Department of Finance (DOF) partnered with the Center for Urban Research (CUR) at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY) to evaluate the effectiveness of handheld devices enhanced with geographic information system (GIS) maps to improve the efficiency and accuracy of data collection for property valuation and tax assessment purposes. This report describes actual project implementation compared with initial objectives and expected outcomes, offers lessons learned and summarizes feedback from the DOF assessment team that field tested the devices and software application. Our general assessment about the feasibility of using hand-held devices for field assessment work is that the relevant technologies available are advancing rapidly, but the effort to deploy them is still highly complex. Any plan to implement these solutions should provide for considerable contingency time and the project be structured with great flexibility so as to accommodate uncertainties. Although this project did not establish the certainty of increased efficiency and improved data quality, the results strongly suggest that can be the case. We conclude from this study that the technologies are effective, and that the key elements to a successful implementation are strong management support and focused attention on the cultural shifts required of organizations undertaking the adoption of hand-held devices

The Faculty Notebook, March 2005

The Faculty Notebook is published periodically by the Office of the Provost at Gettysburg College to bring to the attention of the campus community accomplishments and activities of academic interest. Faculty are encouraged to submit materials for consideration for publication to the Associate Provost for Faculty Development. Copies of this publication are available at the Office of the Provost

Interacting with digital media at home via a second screen

In recent years Interactive Television (iTV) has become a household technology on a global scale. However, iTV is still a new technology in the early stages of its evolution. Our previous research looked at how everyday users of iTV feel about the interactive part of iTV. In a series of studies we investigated how people use iTV services; their likes, dislikes, preferences and opinions. We then developed a second screen-based prototype device in response to these findings and tested it with iTV users in their own homes. This is a work in progress paper that outlines the work carried previously in the area of controlling interactive Television via a second screen. The positive user responses led us to extend the scope of our previous research to look into other related areas such as barriers to digital interactive media and personalisation of digital interactive media at home

"Mobilising" web sites at open university: The Athabasca University experience

This mobile implementation study provides a general idea of how existing Athabasca University sites work with the tested mobile devices and identifies the underlying issues as to why they work that way. Factors considered in the implementation include screen size, the use of advanced features, the display of large images, file formats and linking to embedded objects. In the effort to make the sites as mobile-friendly as possible, it is also important to consider what some possible solutions are. Redesigning all those sites carefully, with due consideration to mobile devices, is one possibility considered. This creates a huge burden of site maintenance, as we need to maintain multiple versions of the same page for different devices. Another problem with this approach is that as the capability of mobile devices changes, those sites need to be updated accordingly to reflect the device’s capability. This issue is addressed to some extent by creating template-based dynamic pages, and rather than redesigning the pages whenever the device capability changes, one could change the profile of the device