Wireless sensor systems in indoor situation modeling II (WISM II)

fi=vertaisarvioimaton|en=nonPeerReviewed

State-of-the-Art Sensors Technology in Spain 2015: Volume 1

This book provides a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art sensors technology in specific leading areas. Industrial researchers, engineers and professionals can find information on the most advanced technologies and developments, together with data processing. Further research covers specific devices and technologies that capture and distribute data to be processed by applying dedicated techniques or procedures, which is where sensors play the most important role. The book provides insights and solutions for different problems covering a broad spectrum of possibilities, thanks to a set of applications and solutions based on sensory technologies. Topics include: • Signal analysis for spectral power • 3D precise measurements • Electromagnetic propagation • Drugs detection • e-health environments based on social sensor networks • Robots in wireless environments, navigation, teleoperation, object grasping, demining • Wireless sensor networks • Industrial IoT • Insights in smart cities • Voice recognition • FPGA interfaces • Flight mill device for measurements on insects • Optical systems: UV, LEDs, lasers, fiber optics • Machine vision • Power dissipation • Liquid level in fuel tanks • Parabolic solar tracker • Force sensors • Control for a twin roto

Fatigue and drowsiness detection using inertial sensors and electrocardiogram

Dissertação realizada no âmbito de trabalho final de mestrado para a obtenção de grau de mestre em Engenharia Electrónica e TelecomunicaçõesThe interest in monitoring a driver’s performance has increased in the past years in order to make the roads safer both for drivers and pedestrians. With this thinking in mind, it arises the idea of developing a system to monitor driver’s fatigue and drowsiness to alert him, if needed, about his psychological and physical states. This dissertation is based on the CardioWheel system, developed by CardioID, and consists in monitoring the person’s ECG signal and to record the motion of the steering wheel during the journey. The ECG signal is extracted with dry-electrodes placed in a conductive leather covering the steering wheel that can sense the electrical signal caused by the heartbeat of the person while having the hands on the wheel. The steering wheel movement monitoring is performed with the help of a three-axis accelerometer placed in the middle of the steering wheel that records the proper acceleration variations while moving the steering wheel. With those accelerations it is possible to calculate the steering wheel rotation angle during all the journey. The amount of data acquired with this system undergoes a compression stage for transmission with the goal of reducing the necessary bandwidth. From the evaluated techniques for data compression, it was possible to conclude that the hybrid method using Linear Predictive Coding and Lempel-Ziv-Welch is the lossless technique with the highest Compression Ratio. However, the hybrid technique using amplitude scaling e DWT is the lossy method with the highest Compression Ratio and a reduced RMSE. The transmission of the compressed data is done via Bluetooth® Low Energy, available in the CardioWheel system, with an exclusive profile developed for this dissertation. This profile has the ability to transmit the ECG and accelerometer data in real time. To detect if the driver is becoming drowsy, were evaluated machine learning algorithms to detect fatigue and drowsiness patterns according to the received ECG and accelerometer data from the steering wheel. Many features were extracted to describe the main characteristics from both signals and, from all the tested techniques, the Support Vector Machine technique proved to be the best classification method with the higher accuracy in classification. With these tested results, it could be possible to implement an alarmistic system, to warn the driver about his psychological and physical states, increasing the safety in the roads.O interesse em monitorizar os condutores dos veículos durante a sua condução tem vindo a aumentar ao longo dos anos, com o objectivo de tornar as estradas mais seguras para condutores e peões. Com este pensamento, surgiu a ideia de desenvolver um sistema capaz de monitorizar a fadiga e a sonolência do condutor e, se necessário, alertá-lo sobre o seu estado físico e psicológico. O ADAS, conhecido como sendo um sistema de assistência avançada para os condutores, é um sistema que monitoriza o desempenho e o comportamento do automóvel, bem como as condições físicas e psicológicas do condutor. Este sistema pode ter um comportamento passivo, alertando os condutores para situações de perigo eminente para que o condutor consiga evitar esses perigos. O LDW, ou aviso de mudança de faixa, é capaz de alertar o condutor de uma saída involuntária de faixa e o FCW, ou aviso de colisão frontal, consegue alertar o condutor de uma colisão eminente, tendo em conta o veículo frontal. Por outro lado, o ADAS consegue concretizar acções de forma assegurar a segurança dos passageiros e dos peões. O AEB, ou travagem de emergência automática, identifica uma colisão eminente e trava sem intervenção do conduto e o LKA, ou assistente de manutenção de faixa, que movimenta o veículo para que este não saia da faixa de rodagem. Esta dissertação é baseada no projecto CardioWheel, desenvolvido pela empresa CardioID, e consiste na monitorização do sinal cardíaco do condutor e na gravação dos movimentos realizados pelo volante do veículo durante a condução. O sinal cardíaco, conhecido como ECG, é extraído através de eléctrodos secos fixados numa capa em pele colocada no volante, que conseguem captar o sinal eléctrico provocado pelo batimento cardíaco enquanto o condutor estiver com as mãos no volante. O controlo dos movimentos do volante, ou SWA, é conseguido através de um acelerómetro de 3 eixos colocado no centro do volante que grava as variações da aceleração instantânea enquanto o condutor movimenta o volante. Através dessas acelerações é possível calcular-se o ângulo de rotação do volante durante todo o percurso. Os dados adquiridos de ECG e SWA geram uma enorme quantidade de informação que tem que ser codificada de forma a reduzir a largura de banda necessária à transmissão. Técnicas no domínio do tempo, como o AZTEC, TP e o CORTES, estão bem documentadas como boas técnicas para compressão de sinal ECG onde o principal objectivo é a obtenção da pulsação cardíaca. Dadas as exigências do projecto, concluiu-se que estes métodos não seriam os melhores para preservar as características principais do sinal de forma a obter-se padrões de fadiga e sonolência. Outros métodos de codificação com e sem perdas foram testados tanto para compressão de sinal ECG como para SWA e pode-se concluir que o método híbrido de Codificação Linear Preditiva com a técnica Lempel-Ziv-Welch é o método sem perdas em que se obteve maior rácio de compressão. Por outro lado, outro método hibrido utilizando escalamento de amplitude com DWT, provou ser o método com perdas com maior rácio de compressão onde o erro quadrático médio é reduzido. A transmissão da informação comprimida é assegurada através de um módulo BLE, presente no CardioWheel, no entanto, foi possível concluir que outras tecnologias como ZigBee ou ANT seriam igualmente compatíveis com o propósito do projecto. Foi desenvolvido especificamente para este projecto um perfil BLE com a capacidade de transmitir a informação do sinal ECG e do acelerómetro em tempo real. Para detectar se o condutor está a apresentar sinais de fadiga ou sonolência, foram testados vários algoritmos de aprendizagem automática que, de acordo com a informação ECG e do acelerómetro enviada pelo volante, conseguem detectar esses padrões. A escala KSS, é uma escala subjectiva que identifica o nível de sonolência de uma pessoa e que permite a classificação do nível de sonolência do condutor. Para construir um algoritmo de inteligência artificial é necessário extrair-se características dos sinais a interpretar. Essas características têm que descrever o sinal de forma precisa para que os algoritmos de aprendizagem automática consigam interpretar e classificar cada sinal da forma adequada. Características como ritmo cardíaco ou amplitude da onda R são exemplos de características utilizadas para descrever o sinal ECG. Características como tempo com o volante estático e aceleração média são exemplos de características utilizadas para descrever o sinal de SWA. Para além das características, um algoritmo de aprendizagem automática necessita de uma base de dados que consiga cobrir todas as situações possíveis para que o algoritmo, olhando para os dados inseridos, consiga detectar os padrões nas características para cada resultado final possível. Métodos de regressão foram implementados de forma e testar o seu desempenho para um problema de classificação, no entanto, não provaram ser os melhores métodos para essa abordagem. De todas as técnicas de classificação testadas, o método de SVM, ou máquina de vectores de suporte, provou ser o que obtém melhores resultados de classificação. Com os resultados obtidos será possível implementar-se um sistema de alarmística que consiga avisar o condutor sobre o seu estado físico e psicológico, aumentando assim a segurança rodoviária.N/

Measuring Information Security Awareness Efforts in Social Networking Sites – A Proactive Approach

For Social Network Sites to determine the effectiveness of their Information Security Awareness (ISA) techniques, many measurement and evaluation techniques are now in place to ensure controls are working as intended. While these techniques are inexpensive, they are all incident- driven as they are based on the occurrence of incident(s). Additionally, they do not present a true reflection of ISA since cyber-incidents are hardly reported. They are therefore adjudged to be post-mortem and risk permissive, the limitations that are inacceptable in industries where incident tolerance level is low. This paper aims at employing a non-incident statistic approach to measure ISA efforts. Using an object- oriented programming approach, PhP is employed as the coding language with MySQL database engine at the back-end to develop sOcialistOnline – a Social Network Sites (SNS) fully secured with multiple ISA techniques. Rather than evaluating the effectiveness of ISA efforts by success of attacks or occurrence of an event, password scanning is implemented to proactively measure the effects of ISA techniques in sOcialistOnline. Thus, measurement of ISA efforts is shifted from detective and corrective to preventive and anticipatory paradigms which are the best forms of information security approach

Bandwidth reservation in mobile ad hoc networks for providing QoS : adaptation for voice support

Le support de qualité de service (QoS) dans les réseaux MANETs (Mobile Ad-Hoc NETworks) a attiré une grande attention ces dernières années. Bien que beaucoup de travaux de recherche ont été consacré pour offrir la QoS dans les réseaux filaires et cellulaires, les solutions de QoS pour le support du trafic temps réel dans les MANET reste l'un des domaines de recherche les plus difficiles et les moins explorés. En fait, les applications temps réel telles que la voix et la vidéo ne pourrait pas fonctionner correctement dans les MANET sans l'utilisation d'un protocole de contrôle d'accès au support (MAC) orienté QoS. En effet, les trafics temps réel demandent des exigences strictes en termes de délai de transmission et de taux de perte de paquets qui peuvent être remplies uniquement si la sous-couche MAC fournit un délai d'accès au canal borné, et un faible taux de collision. Le but de cette thèse est la proposition et l'analyse d'un protocole MAC basé sur la réservation pour garantir la QoS dans les MANETs. Tout d'abord, nous étudions un problème majeur dans la réservation de ressources dans les MANETs qui est la cohérence des réservations. Notre analyse des protocoles de réservation existant pour les MANETs révèle que de nombreux conflits de réservations entre les nœuds voisins se produisent pendant la phase d'établissement de réservation. Ces conflits, qui sont principalement dues à la collision des messages de contrôle de réservation, ont un impact important sur les performances du protocole de réservation, et conduisent à un taux de collision et de perte de paquet importants pendant la durée de vie de la connexion, ce qui n'est pas acceptable pour les trafics temps réels. Nous proposons un nouveau protocole MAC basé sur la réservation qui résout ces conflits. Le principe de notre protocole est d'établir une meilleure coordination entre les nœuds voisins afin d'assurer la cohérence des réservations. Ainsi, avant de considérer qu'une réservation est réussite, le protocole s'assure que chaque message de contrôle envoyé par un nœud pour établir une réservation est bien reçu par tous ses nœuds voisins. Dans la deuxième partie de cette thèse, nous appliquons le protocole de réservation proposé au trafic de type voix. Ainsi, nous étendons ce protocole afin de prendre en compte les caractéristiques du trafic voix, tout en permettant le transport de trafic de données. Nous nous focalisons sur l'utilisation efficace de la bande passante et les mécanismes pour réduire le gaspillage de bande passante. La dernière partie de cette thèse concerne l'extension du protocole proposé en vue de réserver la bande passante pour une connexion temps réel sur un chemin. Ainsi, le protocole MAC de réservation proposé est couplé avec un protocole de routage réactif. En outre, le protocole est étendu avec des mécanismes de gestion de à mobilité afin de faire face à la dégradation des performances due à la mobilité des nœuds. Nous évaluons les performances du protocole proposé dans plusieurs scénarios dans lesquels nous montrons sa supériorité par rapport aux standards existants.QoS provisioning over Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs) has attracted a great attention in recent years. While much research effort has been devoted to provide QoS over wired and cellular networks, QoS solutions for the support of real-time traffic over MANETs remains one of the most challenging and least explored areas. In fact, real-time applications such as voice and video could not function properly on MANETs without a QoS oriented medium access control (MAC) scheme. Indeed, real-time traffics claim strict requirements in terms of transmission delay and packet dropping that can be fulfilled only if the MAC sub-layer provides bounded channel access delay, and low collision rate. The purpose of this thesis is the proposal and analysis of an efficient reservation MAC protocol to provide QoS support over MANETs. Firstly, we study one major issue in resource reservation for MANETs which is reservation consistency. Our analysis of existing reservation MAC protocols for MANETs reveals that many reservation conflicts between neighbor nodes occur during the reservation establishment phase. These conflicts which are mainly due to collisions of reservation control messages, have an important impact on the performance of the reservation protocol, and lead to a significant collision and loss of packets during the life-time of the connection, which is not acceptable for real-time traffics. We design a new reservation MAC protocol that resolves these conflicts. The main principle of our protocol is to achieve better coordination between neighbor nodes in order to ensure consistency of reservations. Thus, before considering a reservation as successful, the protocol tries to ensure that each reservation control message transmitted by a node is successfully received by all its neighbors. In the second part of this thesis, we apply the proposed reservation protocol to voice traffic. Thus, we extend this protocol in order to take into account the characteristics of voice traffic, while enabling data traffic. We focus on efficient bandwidth utilization and mechanisms to reduce the waste of bandwidth. The last part of this thesis relates to the extension of the proposed protocol in order to reserve resources for a real-time connection along a path. Thus, the proposed reservation MAC protocol is coupled with a reactive routing protocol. In addition, the protocol is extended with mobility handling mechanisms in order to cope with performance degradation due to mobility of nodes. We evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme in several scenarios where we show its superiority compared to existing standards

JTIT

kwartalni

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

Specialized IoT systems: Models, Structures, Algorithms, Hardware, Software Tools

Монография включает анализ проблем, модели, алгоритмы и программно- аппаратные средства специализированных сетей интернета вещей. Рассмотрены результаты проектирования и моделирования сети интернета вещей, мониторинга качества продукции, анализа звуковой информации окружающей среды, а также технология выявления заболеваний легких на базе нейронных сетей. Монография предназначена для специалистов в области инфокоммуникаций, может быть полезна студентам соответствующих специальностей, слушателям факультетов повышения квалификации, магистрантам и аспирантам

Multimodal Wearable Sensors for Human-Machine Interfaces

Certain areas of the body, such as the hands, eyes and organs of speech production, provide high-bandwidth information channels from the conscious mind to the outside world. The objective of this research was to develop an innovative wearable sensor device that records signals from these areas more conveniently than has previously been possible, so that they can be harnessed for communication. A novel bioelectrical and biomechanical sensing device, the wearable endogenous biosignal sensor (WEBS), was developed and tested in various communication and clinical measurement applications. One ground-breaking feature of the WEBS system is that it digitises biopotentials almost at the point of measurement. Its electrode connects directly to a high-resolution analog-to-digital converter. A second major advance is that, unlike previous active biopotential electrodes, the WEBS electrode connects to a shared data bus, allowing a large or small number of them to work together with relatively few physical interconnections. Another unique feature is its ability to switch dynamically between recording and signal source modes. An accelerometer within the device captures real-time information about its physical movement, not only facilitating the measurement of biomechanical signals of interest, but also allowing motion artefacts in the bioelectrical signal to be detected. Each of these innovative features has potentially far-reaching implications in biopotential measurement, both in clinical recording and in other applications. Weighing under 0.45 g and being remarkably low-cost, the WEBS is ideally suited for integration into disposable electrodes. Several such devices can be combined to form an inexpensive digital body sensor network, with shorter set-up time than conventional equipment, more flexible topology, and fewer physical interconnections. One phase of this study evaluated areas of the body as communication channels. The throat was selected for detailed study since it yields a range of voluntarily controllable signals, including laryngeal vibrations and gross movements associated with vocal tract articulation. A WEBS device recorded these signals and several novel methods of human-to-machine communication were demonstrated. To evaluate the performance of the WEBS system, recordings were validated against a high-end biopotential recording system for a number of biopotential signal types. To demonstrate an application for use by a clinician, the WEBS system was used to record 12‑lead electrocardiogram with augmented mechanical movement information