Traffic Sign Detection and Recognition with Voice Assistant

here are multitude of applications for detection and recognition of images across different fields. There are some specific applications for these systems used to help people to drive for example in autonomous driving as well as other applications. There has been another focus in the use of classification models used to help drivers providing details about their surrounding while driving. In places like Guadalajara, such models are a valuable tool to reduce traffic accidents. This document will explain the development of a detection and recognition of traffic signs model. This model has the intention of providing details about the meaning of the traffic signs. All this will happen close to real time and will be an additional information to the driver. This whole system could be used by anyone but specifically aimed to people with visual deficiencies. With the use of a robust machine learning and the use of Deep Learning (DL), the expectative is to achieve high accuracy levels on the traffic sign detection and recognition. This system is expected to be available and affordable for most of the drivers in Guadalajara.ITESO, A. C

Improving accessibility for pedestrian crosswalks using digital fencing

Mestrado de dupla diplomação com Universidade Tecnológica NacionalThe exponential growth of urban populations has put in agenda the need of cities to become more sustainable. The concept of Smart Cities can be an important part for the solution to this problem. One of the elements that can be found in this paradigm are smart crosswalks. Smart crosswalks can improve the access to such information by providing a way for the user to share data with them. Although they have many advantages, it is still difficult to adequately support people who are blind or visually impaired when they are crossing the street. The VALLPASS project developed a smart pedestrians crosswalk that, besides other design requirements, aims to promote accessibility by sharing local traffic data with the user. This thesis addresses this problem by presenting the development of a system that aims to provide a solution to promote accessibility of visually impaired citizens through the implementation of a digital fencing based on the user location obtained from the Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) values between two beacons and the user’s smartphone. That in a future could be integrated into the VALLPASS solution. In order to explore this solution it was developed a custom-made application in Android, and it was used an ESP32 as a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) Beacon.El crecimiento exponencial de las poblaciones urbanas ha puesto en la agenda la necesidad de que las ciudades se vuelvan más sostenibles. El concepto de Ciudades Inteligentes puede ser una parte importante de la solución a este problema. Uno de los elementos que se pueden encontrar en este paradigma son los cruces peatonales inteligentes. Los cruces de peatones inteligentes pueden mejorar el acceso a dicha información al proporcionar una forma para que el usuario comparta datos con ellos. Aunque tienen muchas ventajas, todavía es difícil brindar un apoyo adecuado a las personas ciegas o con discapacidad visual cuando cruzan la calle. El proyecto VALLPASS desarrolló un cruce de peatones inteligente que, además de otros requisitos de diseño, tiene como objetivo promover la accesibilidad al compartir datos de tráfico local con el usuario. Esta tesis aborda este problema al presentar el desarrollo de un sistema que tiene como objetivo brindar una solución para promover la accesibilidad de los ciudadanos con discapacidad visual a través de la implementación de un cercado digital basado en la ubicación del usuario obtenida a partir de los valores de RSSI entre dos balizas y el teléfono del usuario. Para explorar esta solución, se desarrolló una aplicación personalizada en Android y se utilizó un ESP32 como baliza BLE

Routeing in military tourism: gamification as an implementation proposal

This dissertation approaches three main concepts, routeing applied to tourism, Military Tourism as a segment of Cultural Tourism and Gamification as a tool for tourist fruition, with the aim at establishing a link between them. Following a literature review from various authors in each of these areas, and after the establishment of a firm conceptual base, this project investigates the possible links between them. In this specific case the application of the benefits of gamification to promote the development of Military Tourism products and their organisation in military themed tourism routes. In conclusion this dissertation presents a guiding model explaining the use of different forms of game based technology to develop different Military Tourism products and how this tool can aid in the organisation in a Military Tourism Route

An ambient assisted living solution for mobile environments

An Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) mobile health application solution with biofeedback based on body sensors is very useful to perform a data collection for diagnosis in patients whose clinical conditions are not favourable. This system allows comfort, mobility, and efficiency in all the process of data collection providing more confidence and operability. A physical fall may be considered something natural in the life span of a human being from birth to death. In a perfect scenario it would be possible to predict when a fall will occur in order to avoid it. Falls represent a high risk for senior people health. Those falls can cause fractures or injuries causing great dependence and debilitation to the elderly and even death in extreme cases. Falls can be detected by the accelerometer included in most of the available mobile phones or portable digital assistants (PDAs). To reverse this tendency, it can be obtained more accurate data for patients monitoring from the body sensors attached to the human body (such as, electrocardiogram (ECG), electromyography (EMG), blood volume pulse (BVP), electro dermal activity (EDA), and galvanic skin response (GSR)). Then, this dissertation reviews the related literature on this topic and introduces a mobile solution for falls prevention, detection, and biofeedback monitoring. The proposed system collects sensed data that is sent to a smartphone or tablet through Bluetooth. Mobile devices are used to process and display information graphically to users. The falls prevention system uses collected data from sensors in order to control and advice the patient or even to give instructions to treat an abnormal condition to reduce the falls risk. In cases of symptoms that last more time it can even detect a possible disease. The signal processing algorithms plays a key role in the fall prevention system. These algorithms in real time, through the capture of biofeedback data, are needed to extract relevant information from the signals detected to warn the patient. Monitoring and processing data from sensors is realized by a smartphone or tablet that will send warnings to users. All the process is performed in real time. These mobile devices are also used as a gateway to send the collected data to a Web service, which subsequently allows data storage and consultation. The proposed system is evaluated, demonstrated, and validated through a prototype and it is ready for use

Modeling an ontology on accessible evacuation routes for emergencies

Providing alert communication in emergency situations is vital to reduce the number of victims. However, this is a challenging goal for researchers and professionals due to the diverse pool of prospective users, e.g. people with disabilities as well as other vulnerable groups. Moreover, in the event of an emergency situation, many people could become vulnerable because of exceptional circumstances such as stress, an unknown environment or even visual impairment (e.g. fire causing smoke). Within this scope, a crucial activity is to notify affected people about safe places and available evacuation routes. In order to address this need, we propose to extend an ontology, called SEMA4A (Simple EMergency Alert 4 [for] All), developed in a previous work for managing knowledge about accessibility guidelines, emergency situations and communication technologies. In this paper, we introduce a semi-automatic technique for knowledge acquisition and modeling on accessible evacuation routes. We introduce a use case to show applications of the ontology and conclude with an evaluation involving several experts in evacuation procedures. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Mobile Campus Tour Guide for UTP

In line with the advancement of current technology, popularity of mobile tour guide application for universities is growing rapidly among the universities outside of Malaysia. Local universities are currently trying to adapt to this new phenomena. Current method used in exploring places in campus is time consuming and not effective. Common workaround is to look for the signboards or ask around but there are cases where the direction given was wrong and confusing. The objective of this project is to develop an android mobile tour guide application, ‘UTP Campus Tour Guide’, for Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS that provide users with interactive map to help them in exploring UTP. A review of existing mobile tour guide applications reveals diverse design methods were used for developing these applications. The results of careful analysis of these applications informed the design of the proposed application. The application is developed using MIT App Inventor 2 as the platform. A customized map of UTP and specific routes from one location to another location was developed using Google Maps Engine and then tested continuously to ensure its functionality working flawlessly. Users are able to find their preferred destination easily and can have a self-guided tour on their own with the help of this mobile tour guide application. Potential target users for this system will be mainly new students, new staffs and visitors of UTP who are not familiar with places in UTP. This mobile application will act as a map navigator for them to find places in UTP easily

SOA-Based Model for Value-Added ITS Services Delivery

Integration is currently a key factor in intelligent transportation systems (ITS), especially because of the ever increasing service demands originating from the ITS industry and ITS users. The current ITS landscape is made up of multiple technologies that are tightly coupled, and its interoperability is extremely low, which limits ITS services generation. Given this fact, novel information technologies (IT) based on the service-oriented architecture (SOA) paradigm have begun to introduce new ways to address this problem. The SOA paradigm allows the construction of loosely coupled distributed systems that can help to integrate the heterogeneous systems that are part of ITS. In this paper, we focus on developing an SOA-based model for integrating information technologies (IT) into ITS to achieve ITS service delivery. To develop our model, the ITS technologies and services involved were identified, catalogued, and decoupled. In doing so, we applied our SOA-based model to integrate all of the ITS technologies and services, ranging from the lowest-level technical components, such as roadside unit as a service (RS S), to the most abstract ITS services that will be offered to ITS users (value-added services). To validate our model, a functionality case study that included all of the components of our model was designed

An aesthetics of touch: investigating the language of design relating to form

How well can designers communicate qualities of touch? This paper presents evidence that they have some capability to do so, much of which appears to have been learned, but at present make limited use of such language. Interviews with graduate designer-makers suggest that they are aware of and value the importance of touch and materiality in their work, but lack a vocabulary to fully relate to their detailed explanations of other aspects such as their intent or selection of materials. We believe that more attention should be paid to the verbal dialogue that happens in the design process, particularly as other researchers show that even making-based learning also has a strong verbal element to it. However, verbal language alone does not appear to be adequate for a comprehensive language of touch. Graduate designers-makers’ descriptive practices combined non-verbal manipulation within verbal accounts. We thus argue that haptic vocabularies do not simply describe material qualities, but rather are situated competences that physically demonstrate the presence of haptic qualities. Such competencies are more important than groups of verbal vocabularies in isolation. Design support for developing and extending haptic competences must take this wide range of considerations into account to comprehensively improve designers’ capabilities