163 research outputs found

    Improving domiciliary robotic services by integrating the ASTRO Robot in an AmI Infrastructure

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    This work describes the ECHORD Experiment ASTROMOBILE, a project aimed to design, develop and test a system for favourable independent living, improved quality of life and efficiency of care for senior citizens in domestic environments. The system, composed of a mobile robotic platform (called ASTRO) and an Ambient Intelligent Infrastructure that actively cooperated between them and with the end-user, was designed and implemented with a user-centred design approach, involving different stakeholders. The system was designed to deliver services to users, like drug delivery, stand support, reminding, info-entertainment. The design took advantages of the integration of robotic platforms with smart environments, to provide to users higher quality and localization based services. Senior end-users were involved in the experimentation of the system in the DomoCasa Living Lab and feedbacks were gathered for the technology assessment. Particularly, this paper demonstrates the general feasibility of the ASTROMOBILE system and thanks to users feedbacks its acceptability and usability

    A wireless telecommunications network for real-time monitoring of greenhouse microclimate

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    An innovative wireless monitoring system for measuring greenhouse climatic parameters was developed to overcome the problems related to wires cabling such as presence of a dense net of wires hampering the cultivation practices, wires subjected to high temperature and relative humidity, rodents that can damage wires. The system exploits battery-powered environmental sensors, such as air temperature and relative humidity sensors, wind speed and direction, and solar radiation sensors, integrated in the contest of an 802.15.4-based wireless sensors network. Besides, a fruit diameter measurement sensor was integrated into the system. This approach guarantees flexibility, ease of deployment and low power consumption. Data collected from the greenhouse are then sent to a remote server via a general packet radio service link. The proposed solution has been implemented in a real environment. The test of the communication system showed that 0.3% of the sent data packed were lost; the climatic parameters measured with the wireless system were compared with data collected by the wired system showing a mean value of the absolute difference equal to 0.6°C for the value of the greenhouse air temperature. The wireless climate monitoring system showed a good reliability, while the sensor node batteries showed a lifetime of 530 days

    'HighChest': An augmented freezer designed for smart food management and promotion of eco-efficient behaviour

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    This paper introduces HighChest, an innovative smart freezer designed to promote energy efficient behavior and the responsible use of food. Introducing a novel humanâmachine interface (HMI) design developed through assessment phases and a user involvement stage, HighChest is state of the art, featuring smart services that exploit embedded sensors and Internet of things functionalities, which enhance the local capabilities of the appliance. The industrial design thinking approach followed for the advanced HMI is intended to maximize the social impact of the food management service, enhancing both the user experience of the product and the userâs willingness to adopt eco- and energy-friendly behaviors. The sensor equipment realizes automatic recognition of food by learning from the users, as well as automatic localization inside the deposit space. Moreover, it provides monitoring of the applianceâs usage, avoiding temperature and humidity issues related to improper use. Experimental tests were conducted to evaluate the localization system, and the results showed 100% accuracy for weights greater or equal to 0.5 kg. Drifts due to the lid opening and prolonged usage time were also measured, to implement automatic reset corrections

    Applications of Engineering 4.0 to Improve the Safety of Metalworking Operators: The Ansaldo Energia Case

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    The paper describes how, on behalf of Ansaldo Energia Spa, a multidisciplinary team developed a methodology based on Industry 4.0 technologies, an approach that allows rescue teams to quickly intervene in the event of a mandown in isolated areas of the plant, where the unfortunate person would risk being found with significant delay and onsequent problems for his physical well-being. Under the supervision of the team, a highly specialized supplier created a suitable hardware and software device to achieve this outcome. Such a device can immediately warn rescue crews in real time as soon as an incident occurs, as well as geo-locate the man on the ground with exceptional precision. Once developed, the approach was standardized in a set of sequential and generic procedures in order to make it adaptable to any sort of firm, construction site, or workshop where a man-down event may happen. The methodology is set up as a real toolkit to protect operators from severe damage that can result from long waits for rescue teams, whenever operators experience negative events for their safety being them exogenous (fainting illnesses, heart attacks, epileptic attacks, strokes, etc.) or endogenous (accidents in the workplace)

    Combining Wireless Sensor Networks and Semantic Middleware for an Internet of Things-Based Sportsman/Woman Monitoring Application.

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    Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are spearheading the efforts taken to build and deploy systems aiming to accomplish the ultimate objectives of the Internet of Things. Due to the sensors WSNs nodes are provided with, and to their ubiquity and pervasive capabilities, these networks become extremely suitable for many applications that so-called conventional cabled or wireless networks are unable to handle. One of these still underdeveloped applications is monitoring physical parameters on a person. This is an especially interesting application regarding their age or activity, for any detected hazardous parameter can be notified not only to the monitored person as a warning, but also to any third party that may be helpful under critical circumstances, such as relatives or healthcare centers. We propose a system built to monitor a sportsman/woman during a workout session or performing a sport-related indoor activity. Sensors have been deployed by means of several nodes acting as the nodes of a WSN, along with a semantic middleware development used for hardware complexity abstraction purposes. The data extracted from the environment, combined with the information obtained from the user, will compose the basis of the services that can be obtained

    Routing and Mobility on IPv6 over LoWPAN

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    The IoT means a world-wide network of interconnected objects based on standard communication protocols. An object in this context is a quotidian physical device augmented with sensing/actuating, processing, storing and communication capabilities. These objects must be able to interact with the surrounding environment where they are placed and to cooperate with neighbouring objects in order to accomplish a common objective. The IoT objects have also the capabilities of converting the sensed data into automated instructions and communicating them to other objects through the communication networks, avoiding the human intervention in several tasks. Most of IoT deployments are based on small devices with restricted computational resources and energy constraints. For this reason, initially the scientific community did not consider the use of IP protocol suite in this scenarios because there was the perception that it was too heavy to the available resources on such devices. Meanwhile, the scientific community and the industry started to rethink about the use of IP protocol suite in all IoT devices and now it is considered as the solution to provide connectivity between the IoT devices, independently of the Layer 2 protocol in use, and to connect them to the Internet. Despite the use of IP suite protocol in all devices and the amount of solutions proposed, many open issues remain unsolved in order to reach a seamless integration between the IoT and the Internet and to provide the conditions to IoT service widespread. This thesis addressed the challenges associated with the interconnectivity between the Internet and the IoT devices and with the security aspects of the IoT. In the interconnectivity between the IoT devices and the Internet the problem is how to provide valuable information to the Internet connected devices, independently of the supported IP protocol version, without being necessary accessed directly to the IoT nodes. In order to solve this problem, solutions based on Representational state transfer (REST) web services and IPv4 to IPv6 dual stack transition mechanism were proposed and evaluated. The REST web service and the transition mechanism runs only at the border router without penalizing the IoT constrained devices. The mitigation of the effects of internal and external security attacks minimizing the overhead imposed on the IoT devices is the security challenge addressed in this thesis. Three different solutions were proposed. The first is a mechanism to prevent remotely initiated transport level Denial of Service attacks that avoids the use of inefficient and hard to manage traditional firewalls. It is based on filtering at the border router the traffic received from the Internet and destined to the IoT network according to the conditions announced by each IoT device. The second is a network access security framework that can be used to control the nodes that have access to the network, based on administrative approval, and to enforce security compliance to the authorized nodes. The third is a network admission control framework that prevents IoT unauthorized nodes to communicate with IoT authorized nodes or with the Internet, which drastically reduces the number of possible security attacks. The network admission control was also exploited as a management mechanism as it can be used to manage the network size in terms of number of nodes, making the network more manageable, increasing its reliability and extending its lifetime.A IoT (Internet of Things) tem suscitado o interesse tanto da comunidade académica como da indústria, uma vez que os campos de aplicação são inúmeros assim como os potenciais ganhos que podem ser obtidos através do uso deste tipo de tecnologia. A IoT significa uma rede global de objetos ligados entre si através de uma rede de comunicações baseada em protocolos standard. Neste contexto, um objeto é um objeto físico do dia a dia ao qual foi adicionada a capacidade de medir e de atuar sobre variáveis físicas, de processar e armazenar dados e de comunicar. Estes objetos têm a capacidade de interagir com o meio ambiente envolvente e de cooperar com outros objetos vizinhos de forma a atingirem um objetivo comum. Estes objetos também têm a capacidade de converter os dados lidos em instruções e de as comunicar a outros objetos através da rede de comunicações, evitando desta forma a intervenção humana em diversas tarefas. A maior parte das concretizações de sistemas IoT são baseados em pequenos dispositivos autónomos com restrições ao nível dos recursos computacionais e de retenção de energia. Por esta razão, inicialmente a comunidade científica não considerou adequado o uso da pilha protocolar IP neste tipo de dispositivos, uma vez que havia a perceção de que era muito pesada para os recursos computacionais disponíveis. Entretanto, a comunidade científica e a indústria retomaram a discussão acerca dos benefícios do uso da pilha protocolar em todos os dispositivos da IoT e atualmente é considerada a solução para estabelecer a conetividade entre os dispositivos IoT independentemente do protocolo da camada dois em uso e para os ligar à Internet. Apesar do uso da pilha protocolar IP em todos os dispositivos e da quantidade de soluções propostas, são vários os problemas por resolver no que concerne à integração contínua e sem interrupções da IoT na Internet e de criar as condições para a adoção generalizada deste tipo de tecnologias. Esta tese versa sobre os desafios associados à integração da IoT na Internet e dos aspetos de segurança da IoT. Relativamente à integração da IoT na Internet o problema é como fornecer informação válida aos dispositivos ligados à Internet, independentemente da versão do protocolo IP em uso, evitando o acesso direto aos dispositivos IoT. Para a resolução deste problema foram propostas e avaliadas soluções baseadas em web services REST e em mecanismos de transição IPv4 para IPv6 do tipo pilha dupla (dual stack). O web service e o mecanismo de transição são suportados apenas no router de fronteira, sem penalizar os dispositivos IoT. No que concerne à segurança, o problema é mitigar os efeitos dos ataques de segurança internos e externos iniciados local e remotamente. Foram propostas três soluções diferentes, a primeira é um mecanismo que minimiza os efeitos dos ataques de negação de serviço com origem na Internet e que evita o uso de mecanismos de firewalls ineficientes e de gestão complexa. Este mecanismo filtra no router de fronteira o tráfego com origem na Internet é destinado à IoT de acordo com as condições anunciadas por cada um dos dispositivos IoT da rede. A segunda solução, é uma framework de network admission control que controla quais os dispositivos que podem aceder à rede com base na autorização administrativa e que aplica políticas de conformidade relativas à segurança aos dispositivos autorizados. A terceira é um mecanismo de network admission control para redes 6LoWPAN que evita que dispositivos não autorizados comuniquem com outros dispositivos legítimos e com a Internet o que reduz drasticamente o número de ataques à segurança. Este mecanismo também foi explorado como um mecanismo de gestão uma vez que pode ser utilizado a dimensão da rede quanto ao número de dispositivos, tornando-a mais fácil de gerir e aumentando a sua fiabilidade e o seu tempo de vida

    Soluções IoT para caracterização de tráfego em cidades inteligentes

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    mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e TelemáticaAs agências que administram o tráfego rodoviário têm de tomar decisões importantes, a fim de definir quais as secções de estrada que têm o maior risco de impactes relacionados com o tráfego. Neste contexto, reconhece-se que a implementação do Sistema Avançado de Gestão de Tráfego (SAGT) pode melhorar não apenas a eficiência da rede, mas também minimizar outras externalidades de tráfego. Neste contexto, novas soluções de software e hardware, capazes de fornecer informações melhoradas a partir da dinâmica do tráfego, podem desempenhar um papel essencial no conhecimento que temos e a forma como o SAGT é executado. Em particular, a disponibilidade de dados georreferenciados está a aumentar rápidamente, seja em dispositivos móveis, como em redes sociais e monitoramento de redes de sensores. Um dos desafios é combinar e melhorar o potencial de cada fonte de informação, e depois juntar várias fontes num modelo agregado. Nesta dissertação é descrita a arquitetura e implementação de diferentes dispositivos para recolha de dados, um protótipo para monitorização com integração de parâmetros do motor em tempo-real e uma aplicação móvel, o desenvolvimento de toda a infra-estrutura necessária e ainda uma aplicação web que combine estes dados e forneça ferramentas de análise e visualização. Nesta dissertação é possível que os utilizadores possam utilizar estas ferramentas para adotarem escolhas mais sustentáveis e uso de estradas menos congestionadas, contribuindo para a diminuição do congestionamento do tráfego, poupando tempo, aumentando o fluxo de tráfego, e contribuindo positivamente para o impacte ambiental.Agencies managing road traffic need to make informed decisions, in order to define which road sections have the highest risk of traffic-related impacts. In this context, it is recognized that the implementation of Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS) may improve not only network efficiency but also minimize other traffic externalities. In this context, novel software and hardware solutions, capable of providing improved information from the traffic dynamics, can play an essential role in the knowledge we have, and the way ATMS is executed. In particular, the availability of geo-referenced data is increasing quickly, either from nomadic devices as well as from social media, and monitoring sensors networks. One of the challenges is to combine and to improve the potential of each source of information, and then combine multiple sources together in an aggregate model. This dissertation describes the architecture and implementation of an accurate, high-frequency vehicle tracker, with the integration of real-time engine statistics, and enhanced with an autonomous inertial model as well as a mobile application for data collection from the embedded sensors and positioning, the development of all necessary infrastructure and a web application that combine these data and provide analysis and visualization tools. In this dissertation it is possible for users to use these tools to adopt more sustainable choices and use of less congested roads, contributing to the reduction of traffic congestion, saving time, improving traffic throughput, and contributing positively to the environmental impact

    Evaluation of Alternative Field Buses for Lighting ControlApplications

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    Enhancing the efficiency of electricity utilization through home energy management systems within the smart grid framework

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    The concept behind smart grids is the aggregation of “intelligence” into the grid, whether through communication systems technologies that allow broadcast/data reception in real-time, or through monitoring and systems control in an autonomous way. With respect to the technological advancements, in recent years there has been a significant increment in devices and new strategies for the implementation of smart buildings/homes, due to the growing awareness of society in relation to environmental concerns and higher energy costs, so that energy efficiency improvements can provide real gains within modern society. In this perspective, the end-users are seen as active players with the ability to manage their energy resources, for example, microproduction units, domestic loads, electric vehicles and their participation in demand response events. This thesis is focused on identifying application areas where such technologies could bring benefits for their applicability, such as the case of wireless networks, considering the positive and negative points of each protocol available in the market. Moreover, this thesis provides an evaluation of dynamic prices of electricity and peak power, using as an example a system with electric vehicles and energy storage, supported by mixed-integer linear programming, within residential energy management. This thesis will also develop a power measuring prototype designed to process and determine the main electrical measurements and quantify the electrical load connected to a low voltage alternating current system. Finally, two cases studies are proposed regarding the application of model predictive control and thermal regulation for domestic applications with cooling requirements, allowing to minimize energy consumption, considering the restrictions of demand, load and acclimatization in the system

    Smart kitchen for Ambient Assisted Living

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    El envejecimiento de la población es una realidad en todos los países desarrollados. Las predicciones de crecimiento de esta población son alarmantes, planteando un reto para los servicios sociales y sanitarios. Las personas ancianas padecen diversas discapacidades que se van acentuando con la edad, siendo más propensas a sufrir accidentes domésticos, presentando problemas para realizar tareas cotidianas, etc. Esta situación conlleva a una pérdida paulatina de capacidades que en muchas ocasiones acaba con la vida autónoma de la persona. En este contexto, las Tecnologías de la Información y Comunicación (TIC) aplicadas al entorno doméstico pueden jugar un papel importante, permitiendo que las personas ancianas vivan más tiempo, de forma independiente en su propio hogar, presentando, por tanto, una alternativa a la hospitalización o institucionalización de las mismas. Este trabajo da un paso más en este sentido, presentando el diseño y desarrollo de un Ambiente Inteligente en la cocina, que ayuda a las personas ancianas y/o con discapacidad a desempeñar sus actividades de la vida diaria de una forma más fácil y sencilla. Esta tesis realiza sus principales aportaciones en dos campos: El metodológico y el tecnológico. Por un lado se presenta una metodología sistemática para extraer necesidades de colectivos específicos a fin de mejorar la información disponible por el equipo de diseño del producto, servicio o sistema. Esta metodología se basa en el estudio de la interacción Hombre-Máquina en base a los paradigmas y modelos existentes y el modelado y descripción de las capacidades del usuario en la misma utilizado el lenguaje estandarizado propuesto en la Clasificación Internacional del Funcionamiento, de la Discapacidad y de la Salud (CIF). Adicionalmente, se plantea el problema de la evaluación tecnológica, diseñando la metodología de evaluación de la tecnología con la finalidad de conocer su accesibilidad, funcionalidad y usabilidad del sistema desarrollado y aplicándola a 61 usuarios y 31 profesionales de la gerontología. Desde un punto de vista técnico, se afronta el diseño de un ambiente asistido inteligente (Ambient Assisted Living, AAL) en la cocina, planteando y definiendo la arquitectura del sistema. Esta arquitectura, basada en OSGi (Open Services Gateway initiative), oferta un sistema modular, con altas capacidades de interoperabilidad y escalabilidad. Además, se diseña e implementa una red de sensores distribuida en el entorno con el fin de obtener la mayor información posible del contexto, presentando distintos algoritmos para obtener información de alto nivel: detección de caídas o localización. Todos los dispositivos presentes en el entorno han sido modelados utilizando la taxonomía propuesta en OSGi4AmI, extendiendo la misma a los electrodomésticos más habituales de la cocina. Finalmente, se presenta el diseño e implementación de la inteligencia del sistema, que en función de la información procedente del contexto y de las capacidades del usuario da soporte a las principales actividades de la vida diaria (AVD) en la cocina
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