Methods and metrics for the improvement of the interaction and the rehabilitation of cerebral palsy through inertial technology

Cerebral palsy (CP) is one of the most limiting disabilities in childhood, with 2.2 cases per 1000 1-year survivors. It is a disorder of movement and posture due to a defect or lesion of the immature brain during the pregnancy or the birth. These motor limitations appear frequently in combination with sensory and cognitive alterations generally result in great difficulties for some people with CP to manipulate objects, communicate and interact with their environment, as well as limiting their mobility. Over the last decades, instruments such as personal computers have become a popular tool to overcome some of the motor limitations and promote neural plasticity, especially during childhood. According to some estimations, 65% of youths with CP that present severely limited manipulation skills cannot use standard mice nor keyboards. Unfortunately, even when people with CP use assistive technology for computer access, they face barriers that lead to the use of typical mice, track balls or touch screens for practical reasons. Nevertheless, with the proper customization, novel developments of alternative input devices such as head mice or eye trackers can be a valuable solution for these individuals. This thesis presents a collection of novel mapping functions and facilitation algorithms that were proposed and designed to ease the act of pointing to graphical elements on the screen—the most elemental task in human-computer interaction—to individuals with CP. These developments were implemented to be used with any head mouse, although they were all tested with the ENLAZA, an inertial interface. The development of such techniques required the following approach: Developing a methodology to evaluate the performance of individuals with CP in pointing tasks, which are usually described as two sequential subtasks: navigation and targeting. Identifying the main motor abnormalities that are present in individuals with CP as well as assessing the compliance of these people with standard motor behaviour models such as Fitts’ law. Designing and validating three novel pointing facilitation techniques to be implemented in a head mouse. They were conceived for users with CP and muscle weakness that have great difficulties to maintain their heads in a stable position. The first two algorithms consist in two novel mapping functions that aim to facilitate the navigation phase, whereas the third technique is based in gravity wells and was specially developed to facilitate the selection of elements in the screen. In parallel with the development of the facilitation techniques for the interaction process, we evaluated the feasibility of use inertial technology for the control of serious videogames as a complement to traditional rehabilitation therapies of posture and balance. The experimental validation here presented confirms that this concept could be implemented in clinical practice with good results. In summary, the works here presented prove the suitability of using inertial technology for the development of an alternative pointing device—and pointing algorithms—based on movements of the head for individuals with CP and severely limited manipulation skills and new rehabilitation therapies for the improvement of posture and balance. All the contributions were validated in collaboration with several centres specialized in CP and similar disorders and users with disability recruited in those centres.La parálisis cerebral (PC) es una de las deficiencias más limitantes de la infancia, con un incidencia de 2.2 casos por cada 1000 supervivientes tras un año de vida. La PC se manifiesta principalmente como una alteración del movimiento y la postura y es consecuencia de un defecto o lesión en el cerebro inmaduro durante el embarazo o el parto. Las limitaciones motrices suelen aparecer además en compañía de alteraciones sensoriales y cognitivas, lo que provoca por lo general grandes dificultades de movilidad, de manipulación, de relación y de interacción con el entorno. En las últimas décadas, el ordenador personal se ha extendido como herramienta para la compensación de parte de estas limitaciones motoras y como medio de promoción de la neuroplasticidad, especialmente durante la infancia. Desafortunadamente, cerca de un 65% de las personas PC que son diagnosticadas con limitaciones severas de manipulación son incapaces de utilizar ratones o teclados convencionales. A veces, ni siquiera la tecnología asistencial les resulta de utilidad ya que se encuentran con impedimentos que hacen que opten por usar dispositivos tradicionales aun sin dominar su manejo. Para estas personas, los desarrollos recientes de ratones operados a través de movimientos residuales con la cabeza o la mirada podrían ser una solución válida, siempre y cuando se personalice su manejo. Esta tesis presenta un conjunto de novedosas funciones de mapeo y algoritmos de facilitaci ón que se han propuesto y diseñado con el ánimo de ayudar a personas con PC en las tareas de apuntamiento de objetos en la pantalla —las más elementales dentro de la interacción con el ordenador. Aunque todas las contribuciones se evaluaron con la interfaz inercial ENLAZA, desarrollada igualmente en nuestro grupo, podrían ser aplicadas a cualquier ratón basado en movimientos de cabeza. El desarrollo de los trabajos se resume en las siguientes tareas abordadas: Desarrollo de una metodología para la evaluación de la habilidad de usuarios con PC en tareas de apuntamiento, que se contemplan como el encadenamiento de dos sub-tareas: navegación (alcance) y selección (clic). Identificación de los tipos de alteraciones motrices presentes en individuos con PC y el grado de ajuste de éstos a modelos estándares de comportamiento motriz como puede ser la ley de Fitts. Propuesta y validación de tres técnicas de facilitación del alcance para ser implementadas en un ratón basado en movimientos de cabeza. La facilitación se ha centrado en personas que presentan debilidad muscular y dificultades para mantener la posición de la cabeza. Mientras que los dos primeros algoritmos se centraron en facilitar la navegación, el tercero tuvo como objetivo ayudar en la selección a través de una técnica basada en pozos gravitatorios de proximidad. En paralelo al desarrollo de estos algoritmos de facilitación de la interacción, evaluamos la posibilidad de utilizar tecnología inercial para el control de videojuegos en rehabilitación. Nuestra validación experimental demostró que este concepto puede implementarse en la práctica clínica como complemento a terapias tradicionales de rehabilitación de la postura y el equilibrio. Como conclusión, los trabajos desarrollados en esta tesis vienen a constatar la idoneidad de utilizar sensores inerciales para el desarrollo de interfaces de accesso alternativo al ordenador basados en movimientos residuales de la cabeza para personas con limitaciones severas de manipulación. Esta solución se complementa con algoritmos de facilitación del alcance. Por otra parte, estas soluciones tecnológicas de interfaz con el ordenador representan igualmente un complemento de terapias tradicionales de rehabilitación de la postura y el equilibrio. Todas las contribuciones se validaron en colaboración con una serie de centros especializados en parálisis cerebral y trastornos afines contando con usuarios con discapacidad reclutados en dichos centros.This thesis was completed in the Group of Neural and Cognitive Engineering (gNEC) of the CAR UPM-CSIC with the financial support of the FP7 Framework EU Research Project ABC (EU-2012-287774), the IVANPACE Project (funded by Obra Social de Caja Cantabria, 2012-2013), and the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness in the framework of two projects: the Interplay Project (RTC-2014-1812-1) and most recently the InterAAC Project (RTC-2015-4327-1)Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Ingeniería Eléctrica, Electrónica y AutomáticaPresidente: Juan Manuel Belda Lois.- Secretario: María Dolores Blanco Rojas.- Vocal: Luis Fernando Sánchez Sante

Seeing the wood for the trees. Carer related research and knowledge: A scoping review

This NIHR-SSCR funded scoping review provides a comprehensive mapping of what is known about carers and caring, and aims to help inform policy, practice and research in relation to carers. The review was undertaken by searching 10 electronic bibliographic databases, supplemented by additional web searches to identify academic research, grey literature and wider knowledge. The analysis adopts a selective thematic approach covering: carer variables - the characteristics of different types of carer and different caring situations; types of care - the nature of needs of the cared for person and the features of the care situation; the impact of caring – resilience and coping, employment and health; and carer support and needs assessment. The final section highlights key messages identified from the review. It found that caring involves all sections and age groups of the population, with people are likely to experience one or more periods of caregiving over their lifetime. The uniqueness of each caring relationship is also highlighted. In relation to types of carers, knowledge about ‘hard to reach’ groups, such as BAME and LGBT carers, remains sparse. Older carers are also relatively invisible in policy and research terms. It found that much of the knowledge about carers identified in the review relates to their characteristics, their lived experience and the nature of their caregiving, with relatively less being known about the effectiveness of interventions to support them. The report concludes by offering suggestions for policy and practice. An appendix provides a bibliography of the 3,434 items identified in review, classified into 17 types of reference

Re-thinking Mobility Poverty

"This book seeks to better conceptualise and define mobility poverty, addressing both its geographies and socio-economic landscapes. It moves beyond the analysis of ‘transport poverty’ and innovatively explores mobility inequalities and social construction of mobility disadvantages. The debate on mobility poverty is gaining momentum due to its role in triggering social exclusion and economic deprivation. In this light, this book examines the social construction of mobility poverty by delving into mobility patterns and needs as they are differently experienced by social groups in different geographical situations. It considers factors such as the role of transport regimes and their social value when analysing the social construction of individual´s mobility needs. Furthermore, the gaps between articulated and unarticulated needs are identified by observing actual travel patterns of individuals. The book offers a comparison of the global phenomenon through fieldwork conducted in six different European countries – Greece, Portugal, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania and Germany. This book will be useful reading for planners, sociologists, geographers, mobility/transport researchers, mobility advocates, policy-makers and transport practitioners. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367333317, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

Re-thinking Mobility Poverty

"This book seeks to better conceptualise and define mobility poverty, addressing both its geographies and socio-economic landscapes. It moves beyond the analysis of ‘transport poverty’ and innovatively explores mobility inequalities and social construction of mobility disadvantages. The debate on mobility poverty is gaining momentum due to its role in triggering social exclusion and economic deprivation. In this light, this book examines the social construction of mobility poverty by delving into mobility patterns and needs as they are differently experienced by social groups in different geographical situations. It considers factors such as the role of transport regimes and their social value when analysing the social construction of individual´s mobility needs. Furthermore, the gaps between articulated and unarticulated needs are identified by observing actual travel patterns of individuals. The book offers a comparison of the global phenomenon through fieldwork conducted in six different European countries – Greece, Portugal, Italy, Luxembourg, Romania and Germany. This book will be useful reading for planners, sociologists, geographers, mobility/transport researchers, mobility advocates, policy-makers and transport practitioners. The Open Access version of this book, available at https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367333317, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license.

Smart cities: Advances in research—An information systems perspective

YesSmart cities employ information and communication technologies to improve: the quality of life for its citizens, the local economy, transport, traffic management, environment, and interaction with government. Due to the relevance of smart cities (also referred using other related terms such as Digital City, Information City, Intelligent City, Knowledge-based City, Ubiquitous City, Wired City) to various stakeholders and the benefits and challenges associated with its implementation, the concept of smart cities has attracted significant attention from researchers within multiple fields, including information systems. This study provides a valuable synthesis of the relevant literature by analysing and discussing the key findings from existing research on issues related to smart cities from an Information Systems perspective. The research analysed and discussed in this study focuses on number of aspects of smart cities: smart mobility, smart living, smart environment, smart citizens, smart government, and smart architecture as well as related technologies and concepts. The discussion also focusses on the alignment of smart cities with the UN sustainable development goals. This comprehensive review offers critical insight to the key underlying research themes within smart cities, highlighting the limitations of current developments and potential future directions

Multi-Agent Systems

This Special Issue ""Multi-Agent Systems"" gathers original research articles reporting results on the steadily growing area of agent-oriented computing and multi-agent systems technologies. After more than 20 years of academic research on multi-agent systems (MASs), in fact, agent-oriented models and technologies have been promoted as the most suitable candidates for the design and development of distributed and intelligent applications in complex and dynamic environments. With respect to both their quality and range, the papers in this Special Issue already represent a meaningful sample of the most recent advancements in the field of agent-oriented models and technologies. In particular, the 17 contributions cover agent-based modeling and simulation, situated multi-agent systems, socio-technical multi-agent systems, and semantic technologies applied to multi-agent systems. In fact, it is surprising to witness how such a limited portion of MAS research already highlights the most relevant usage of agent-based models and technologies, as well as their most appreciated characteristics. We are thus confident that the readers of Applied Sciences will be able to appreciate the growing role that MASs will play in the design and development of the next generation of complex intelligent systems. This Special Issue has been converted into a yearly series, for which a new call for papers is already available at the Applied Sciences journal’s website: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/applsci/special_issues/Multi-Agent_Systems_2019

Implementation of end-user development success factors in mashup development environments

[EN] The Future Internet is expected to be composed of a mesh of interoperable web services accessed from all over the Web. This approach has been supported by many software providers who have provided a wide range of mash up tools for creating composite applications based on components prepared by the respective provider. These tools aim to achieve the end-user development (EUD) of rich internet applications (RIA); however, most, having failed to meet the needs of end users without programming knowledge, have been unsuccessful. Thus, many studies have investigated success factors in order to propose scales of success factor objectives and assess the adequacy of mashup tools for their purpose. After reviewing much of the available literature, this paper proposes a new success factor scale based on human factors, human-computer interaction (HCI) factors and the specialization-functionality relationship. It brings together all these factors, offering a general conception of EUD success factors. The proposed scale was applied in an empirical study on current EUD tools, which found that today's EUD tools have many shortcomings. In order to achieve an acceptable success rate among end users, we then designed a mashup tool architecture, called FAST-Wirecloud, which was built taking into account the proposed EUD success factor scale. The results of a new empirical study carried out using this tool have demonstrated that users are better able to successfully develop their composite applications and that FAST-Wirecloud has scored higher than all the other tools under study on all scales of measurement, and particularly on the scale proposed in this paper. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This research was partially supported by the European Union co-funded IST projects FAST: Fast and Advanced Storyboard Tools (GA 216048), FI-WARE: Future Internet Core Platform (GA 285248) and FI-CORE: Future Internet - Core (GA 632893). The FI-WARE and FI-CORE projects are part of the European Commission's Futuree Internet Public-Private Partnership (FI-PPP) initiative.Lizcano, D.; López, G.; Soriano, J.; Lloret, J. (2016). Implementation of end-user development success factors in mashup development environments. Computer Standards & Interfaces. 47:1-18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.csi.2016.02.006S1184