MusA: Using Indoor Positioning and Navigation to Enhance Cultural Experiences in a museum

In recent years there has been a growing interest into the use of multimedia mobile guides in museum environments. Mobile devices have the capabilities to detect the user context and to provide pieces of information suitable to help visitors discovering and following the logical and emotional connections that develop during the visit. In this scenario, location based services (LBS) currently represent an asset, and the choice of the technology to determine users' position, combined with the definition of methods that can effectively convey information, become key issues in the design process. In this work, we present MusA (Museum Assistant), a general framework for the development of multimedia interactive guides for mobile devices. Its main feature is a vision-based indoor positioning system that allows the provision of several LBS, from way-finding to the contextualized communication of cultural contents, aimed at providing a meaningful exploration of exhibits according to visitors' personal interest and curiosity. Starting from the thorough description of the system architecture, the article presents the implementation of two mobile guides, developed to respectively address adults and children, and discusses the evaluation of the user experience and the visitors' appreciation of these application

Augmented reality device for first response scenarios

A prototype of a wearable computer system is proposed and implemented using commercial off-shelf components. The system is designed to allow the user to access location-specific information about an environment, and to provide capability for user tracking. Areas of applicability include primarily first response scenarios, with possible applications in maintenance or construction of buildings and other structures. Necessary preparation of the target environment prior to system\u27s deployment is limited to noninvasive labeling using optical fiducial markers. The system relies on computational vision methods for registration of labels and user position. With the system the user has access to on-demand information relevant to a particular real-world location. Team collaboration is assisted by user tracking and real-time visualizations of team member positions within the environment. The user interface and display methods are inspired by Augmented Reality1 (AR) techniques, incorporating a video-see-through Head Mounted Display (HMD) and fingerbending sensor glove.*. 1Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real world and computer generated data. At present, most AR research is concerned with the use of live video imagery which is digitally processed and augmented by the addition of computer generated graphics. Advanced research includes the use of motion tracking data, fiducial marker recognition using machine vision, and the construction of controlled environments containing any number of sensors and actuators. (Source: Wikipedia) *This dissertation is a compound document (contains both a paper copy and a CD as part of the dissertation). The CD requires the following system requirements: Adobe Acrobat; Microsoft Office; Windows MediaPlayer or RealPlayer

The Exploitation of Data from Remote and Human Sensors for Environment Monitoring in the SMAT Project

In this paper, we outline the functionalities of a system that integrates and controls a fleet of Unmanned Aircraft Vehicles (UAVs). UAVs have a set of payload sensors employed for territorial surveillance, whose outputs are stored in the system and analysed by the data exploitation functions at different levels. In particular, we detail the second level data exploitation function whose aim is to improve the sensors data interpretation in the post-mission activities. It is concerned with the mosaicking of the aerial images and the cartography enrichment by human sensors—the social media users. We also describe the software architecture for the development of a mash-up (the integration of information and functionalities coming from the Web) and the possibility of using human sensors in the monitoring of the territory, a field in which, traditionally, the involved sensors were only the hardware ones.JRC.H.6-Digital Earth and Reference Dat

Rover-II: A Context-Aware Middleware for Pervasive Computing Environment

It is well recognized that context plays a significant role in all human endeavors. All decisions are based on information which has to be interpreted in context. By making information systems context-aware we can have systems that significantly enhance human capabilities to make critical decisions. A major challenge of context-aware systems is to balance usability with generality and extensibility. The relevant context changes depending on the particular application. The model used to represent the context and its relationship to entities must be general enough to allow additions of context categories without redesign while remaining usable across many applications. Also, while efforts are put in by application designers and developers to make applications context-aware, these efforts are customized to specific needs of the target application, and only certain common contexts like location and time are taken into account. Therefore, a general framework is called for that can (i) efficiently maintain, represent and integrate contextual information, (ii) act as an integration platform where different applications can share contexts and (iii) provide relevant services to make efficient use of the contextual information. This dissertation presents: * a generic and effective context model - Rover Context Model (RoCoM) that is structured around four primitives: entities, events, relationships, and activities; and practically usable through the concept of templates, * a flexible, extensible and generic ontology - Rover Context Model Ontology (RoCoMO) supporting the model, that addresses the shortcomings of existing ontologies, * an effective mechanism of modeling the context of a situation, through the concept of relevant context, with the help of situation graph, efficiently handling and making best use of context information, * a context middleware - Rover-II, which serves as a framework for contextual information integration, that could be used not just to store and compile the contextual information, but also integrate relevant services to enhance the context information; and more importantly, enable sharing of context among the applications subscribed to it, * the initial design and implementation of a distributed architecture for Rover-II, following a P2P arrangement inspired from Tapestry, The above concepts are illustrated through M-Urgency, a context-aware public safety system that has been deployed at the University of Maryland Police Department

Mobile video annotations: a case study on supporting rehabilitation exercises

Annotations enable us to highlight key points or add information to content presented, for instance, on paper or digital media. Even though smartphones and tablets facilitate video capturing, currently only few applications allow limited video annotations using the mobile device itself. Given that video annotations can assist many tasks that depend or can be enhanced by video capturing, in previous work we have contributed with a tool for allowing multimodal video annotation using mobile devices. Upon experimenting with the tool, we identified that reviewing rehabilitation exercise videos can be especially enhanced with video annotations. Professionals in the field of physiotherapy and occupational therapy can add relevant annotations for their patients to improve performance of their exercises. After an evaluation with a specialist in occupational therapy, we identified new requirements associated with the monitoring of patients. We then identified the opportunity to develop a monitoring system with the collaboration of two rehabilitation specialists. Since these two specialists work with mirror therapy, we defined requirements that are relevant for this type of therapy. The system was developed to support the monitoring of exercises combined with video recording and annotation capabilities. The system aims to support rehabilitation therapy by distance: therapists can monitor patients as they record videos that are sent for evaluation. We identified requirements that may be applied in many scenarios, however mirror therapy demanded many specific requirements related to the recording of videos.Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP, grant #2011/17040-0)National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq

Context-Aware Service Creation On The Semantic Web

With the increase of the computational power of mobile devices, their new capabilities and the addition of new context sensors, it is possible to obtain more information from mobile users and to offer new ways and tools to facilitate the content creation process. All this information can be exploited by the service creators to provide mobile services with higher degree of personalization that translate into better experiences. Currently on the web, many data sources containing UGC provide access to them through classical web mechanisms (built on a small set of standards), that is, custom web APIs that promote the fragmentation of the Web. To address this issue, Tim Berners-Lee proposed the Linked Data principles to provide guidelines for the use of standard web technologies, thus allowing the publication of structured on the Web that can be accessed using standard database mechanisms. The increase of Linked Data published on the web, increases opportunities for mobile services take advantage of it as a huge source of data, information and knowledge, either user-generated or not. This dissertation proposes a framework for creating mobile services that exploit the context information, generated content of its users and the data, information and knowledge present on the Web of Data. In addition we present, the cases of different mobile services created to take advantage of these elements and in which the proposed framework have been implemented (at least partially). Each of these services belong to different domains and each of them highlight the advantages provided to their end user

From Sensor to Observation Web with Environmental Enablers in the Future Internet

This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet. These communities’ environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources. Indeed, this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere Sensor Web to an Observation Web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors, environmental simulations and citizens. The paper also describes the research challenges to realize the Observation Web and the associated environmental enablers for the Future Internet. Such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device, a web-service application, or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the Future Internet applications to consume, produce, and use environmental observations in cross-domain applications. The term ?envirofied? Future Internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the Environmental Usage Area within the Future Internet PPP program. Relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors (anywhere), the provision and generation of information by citizens, and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations. The paper addresses the technical challenges in the Environmental Usage Area and the need for designing multi-style service oriented architecture. Key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities, providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval. Another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation, and the related propagation of information uncertainty. Approaches to security, standardization and harmonization, all essential for sustainable solutions, are summarized from the perspective of the Environmental Usage Area. The paper concludes with an overview of emerging, high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems (biodiversity), air quality (atmospheric conditions) and water ecosystems (marine asset management)

City Data Fusion: Sensor Data Fusion in the Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) has gained substantial attention recently and play a significant role in smart city application deployments. A number of such smart city applications depend on sensor fusion capabilities in the cloud from diverse data sources. We introduce the concept of IoT and present in detail ten different parameters that govern our sensor data fusion evaluation framework. We then evaluate the current state-of-the art in sensor data fusion against our sensor data fusion framework. Our main goal is to examine and survey different sensor data fusion research efforts based on our evaluation framework. The major open research issues related to sensor data fusion are also presented.Comment: Accepted to be published in International Journal of Distributed Systems and Technologies (IJDST), 201

Mobile Augmented Reality: User Interfaces, Frameworks, and Intelligence

Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) integrates computer-generated virtual objects with physical environments for mobile devices. MAR systems enable users to interact with MAR devices, such as smartphones and head-worn wearables, and perform seamless transitions from the physical world to a mixed world with digital entities. These MAR systems support user experiences using MAR devices to provide universal access to digital content. Over the past 20 years, several MAR systems have been developed, however, the studies and design of MAR frameworks have not yet been systematically reviewed from the perspective of user-centric design. This article presents the first effort of surveying existing MAR frameworks (count: 37) and further discuss the latest studies on MAR through a top-down approach: (1) MAR applications; (2) MAR visualisation techniques adaptive to user mobility and contexts; (3) systematic evaluation of MAR frameworks, including supported platforms and corresponding features such as tracking, feature extraction, and sensing capabilities; and (4) underlying machine learning approaches supporting intelligent operations within MAR systems. Finally, we summarise the development of emerging research fields and the current state-of-the-art, and discuss the important open challenges and possible theoretical and technical directions. This survey aims to benefit both researchers and MAR system developers alike.Peer reviewe