Medical data analysis based on Nao robot: An automated approach towards robotic real-time interaction with human body

There is a significant increase of strokes, heart diseases and premature death, people need more than ever to be aware of their vital signs such as blood pressure, heart beats, cholesterol level etc. Monitoring and analysing this medical data can help increase the awareness of the risk factor of heart disease. However, there is a huge pressure on medical staff and general practitioners (GPs), therefore this research proposes a medical data analysis based on Nao robots to meet these needs and it will serve as an automated approach towards a robotics real-time interaction with the human body. The proposed research offers a new way to allow users to understand the meaning of their vital signs using a human robot interaction. The developed system has been tested on publicly available data and simulated data. It can predict the future risk of heart disease based on some data attributes. Based on the risk prediction, it can feedback the result and the required lifestyle changes to avoid any related risk

The Role of Edge Robotics As-a-Service in Monitoring COVID-19 Infection

Deep learning technology has been widely used in edge computing. However, pandemics like covid-19 require deep learning capabilities at mobile devices (detect respiratory rate using mobile robotics or conduct CT scan using a mobile scanner), which are severely constrained by the limited storage and computation resources at the device level. To solve this problem, we propose a three-tier architecture, including robot layers, edge layers, and cloud layers. We adopt this architecture to design a non-contact respiratory monitoring system to break down respiratory rate calculation tasks. Experimental results of respiratory rate monitoring show that the proposed approach in this paper significantly outperforms other approaches. It is supported by computation time costs with 2.26 ms per frame, 27.48 ms per frame, 0.78 seconds for convolution operation, similarity calculation, processing one-minute length respiratory signals, respectively. And the computation time costs of our three-tier architecture are less than that of edge+cloud architecture and cloud architecture. Moreover, we use our three-tire architecture for CT image diagnosis task decomposition. The evaluation of a CT image dataset of COVID-19 proves that our three-tire architecture is useful for resolving tasks on deep learning networks by edge equipment. There are broad application scenarios in smart hospitals in the future

The Penetration of Internet of Things in Robotics: Towards a Web of Robotic Things

As the Internet of Things (IoT) penetrates different domains and application areas, it has recently entered also the world of robotics. Robotics constitutes a modern and fast-evolving technology, increasingly being used in industrial, commercial and domestic settings. IoT, together with the Web of Things (WoT) could provide many benefits to robotic systems. Some of the benefits of IoT in robotics have been discussed in related work. This paper moves one step further, studying the actual current use of IoT in robotics, through various real-world examples encountered through a bibliographic research. The paper also examines the potential ofWoT, together with robotic systems, investigating which concepts, characteristics, architectures, hardware, software and communication methods of IoT are used in existing robotic systems, which sensors and actions are incorporated in IoT-based robots, as well as in which application areas. Finally, the current application of WoT in robotics is examined and discussed

Semantics-based platform for context-aware and personalized robot interaction in the internet of robotic things

Robots are moving from well-controlled lab environments to the real world, where an increasing number of environments has been transformed into smart sensorized IoT spaces. Users will expect these robots to adapt to their preferences and needs, and even more so for social robots that engage in personal interactions. In this paper, we present declarative ontological models and a middleware platform for building services that generate interaction tasks for social robots in smart IoT environments. The platform implements a modular, data-driven workflow that allows developers of interaction services to determine the appropriate time, content and style of human-robot interaction tasks by reasoning on semantically enriched loT sensor data. The platform also abstracts the complexities of scheduling, planning and execution of these tasks, and can automatically adjust parameters to the personal profile and current context. We present motivational scenarios in three environments: a smart home, a smart office and a smart nursing home, detail the interfaces and executional paths in our platform and present a proof-of-concept implementation. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

From Personalized Medicine to Population Health: A Survey of mHealth Sensing Techniques

Mobile Sensing Apps have been widely used as a practical approach to collect behavioral and health-related information from individuals and provide timely intervention to promote health and well-beings, such as mental health and chronic cares. As the objectives of mobile sensing could be either \emph{(a) personalized medicine for individuals} or \emph{(b) public health for populations}, in this work we review the design of these mobile sensing apps, and propose to categorize the design of these apps/systems in two paradigms -- \emph{(i) Personal Sensing} and \emph{(ii) Crowd Sensing} paradigms. While both sensing paradigms might incorporate with common ubiquitous sensing technologies, such as wearable sensors, mobility monitoring, mobile data offloading, and/or cloud-based data analytics to collect and process sensing data from individuals, we present a novel taxonomy system with two major components that can specify and classify apps/systems from aspects of the life-cycle of mHealth Sensing: \emph{(1) Sensing Task Creation \& Participation}, \emph{(2) Health Surveillance \& Data Collection}, and \emph{(3) Data Analysis \& Knowledge Discovery}. With respect to different goals of the two paradigms, this work systematically reviews this field, and summarizes the design of typical apps/systems in the view of the configurations and interactions between these two components. In addition to summarization, the proposed taxonomy system also helps figure out the potential directions of mobile sensing for health from both personalized medicines and population health perspectives.Comment: Submitted to a journal for revie

Wearable devices και mobile applications στα πλαίσια του Internet Of Things για την παρακολούθηση της φυσικής κατάστασης των χρηστών

Διπλωματική εργασία--Πανεπιστήμιο Μακεδονίας, Θεσσαλονίκη, 2018Τις τελευταίες δεκαετίες παρουσιάζεται μια συνεχόμενη αναζήτηση και ανάπτυξη νέων τεχνολογιών που θα διευκολύνουν την ζωή μας και θα κάνουν την καθημερινότητα των χρηστών πιο εύκολη. Για αυτό τον λόγο αποφασίσαμε το θέμα της παρούσας διπλωματικής να είναι η ανάλυση των Wearable Devices («Φορετών» Συσκευών) και των Mobile Applications (Κινητών Εφαρμογών), δηλαδή νέων τεχνολογιών που αφορούν την παρακολούθηση της φυσικής κατάστασης των χρηστών, στα πλαίσια του Internet of Things (Διαδίκτυο των Πραγμάτων). Ειδικότερα, Το Διαδίκτυο των Πραγμάτων (Internet of Things) πρωτοπορεί σε αυτή την προσπάθεια, μπαίνοντας όλο και περισσότερο στην καθημερινότητά μας. Ο κλάδος του fitness, τα τελευταία χρόνια απασχολεί όλο και περισσότερο τους ανθρώπους και ειδικότερα τους νέους. Η παχυσαρκία αποτελεί τη μάστιγα της σημερινής εποχής και μέσω αυτών των τεχνολογιών ο χρήστης έχει τη δυνατότητα να παρακολουθεί και να ελέγχει όχι μόνο τη φυσική του κατάσταση αλλά και το βάρος του και συνεπώς την υγεία του. Υπάρχουν πολλές εταιρείες είτε μεγάλες είτε μικρές που απασχολούνται στον εξεταζόμενο κλάδο, οι οποίες συνεχώς δημιουργούν νέα προϊόντα για αυτό τον σκοπό. Ο κύριος στόχος της παρούσας μελέτης είναι να δώσει μια ολοκληρωμένη εικόνα αυτού του τομέα έρευνας και να αναφέρει το πλήρες φάσμα εργαλείων στον τομέα των φορητών συσκευών για την παρακολούθησης της φυσικής κατάστασης Πιο συγκεκριμένα, θα ερευνήσουμε τα Wearable Devices και τις κινητές εφαρμογές που ήδη υπάρχουν στην αγορά ενώ επικεντρώνεται στον νέο κλάδο του Internet of Things μέσω δευτερογενούς έρευνας σε αντίστοιχες μελέτες άλλων ερευνητών, αναφέροντας τόσο τα ερευνητικά έργα όσο και τις εμπορικές συσκευές ώστε να μελετήσουμε και να διερευνήσουμε την τρέχουσα διαθέσιμη τεχνολογία. Κατά την προετοιμασία αυτής της εργασίας, μελετήσαμε τη βιβλιογραφία και η δευτερογενής έρευνα στηρίχθηκε κυρίως στην κατανόηση και ταξινόμηση με βάση κάποια χαρακτηριστικά των παραπάνω εννοιών

Mapeamento de Requisitos de Segurança à Tecnologia na Internet das Coisas

Devido ao rápido avanço tecnológico, a segurança e a privacidade têm sido assuntos de debates nos últimos anos, tanto por parte da comunidade industrial e científica, como pelos utilizadores finais. A partilha de informação através de métodos tecnológicos tem vindo a crescer na última década, devido também ao rápido crescimento e penetração destes meios. Uma das áreas que maior crescimento tem apresentado é conhecida como a Internet das Coisas (IdC), que engloba tecnologia que permite conectar vários objetos físicos e inteligentes com poder computacional reduzido na Internet, permitindo a partilha de informações entre si. Atualmente a IdC já desempenha um papel importante em muitas áreas chave da sociedade (e.g., transportes, saúde, e agricultura), sobretudo por permitir, de forma cómoda, extrair e partilhar informações referentes ao estado do ambiente. No entanto, vários problemas e desafios relacionados com a segurança têm surgido e demonstrado que a IdC carece de uma intervenção estruturante nessa dimensão, começando pelo básico. A IdC está num estado prematuro em termos de segurança e privacidade. Não existe uma abordagem geral (ou até preocupação) em relação à segurança, e não existe um mecanismo padronizado para a proteção dos dados e dispositivos. O hype associado a novos sistemas da IdC degenera num time-to-market reduzido que beneficia funcionalidade e prejudica engenharia de segurança. Por outro lado, especificações de processamento e memória mais modestas para muitos dos dispositivos da IdC criam desafios adicionais ao desenho e à integração de mecanismos de segurança; o facto de muitos dispositivos estarem fisicamente acessíveis, sem controlo rígido de acesso, bem como o facto de tecnologias sem-fios muitas vezes não cifradas ou sem garantia de integridade serem usadas nas comunicações da IdC facilita sobremaneira ataques a dispositivos IdC por parte de entidades maliciosas. Esta dissertação começa por analisar, de forma abrangente, alguns estudos já realizados na área da segurança para a IdC, comparando-os e usando-os como motivação para um estudo sobre a performance de mecanismos de segurança em plataformas de desenvolvimento atuais da IdC, especificamente num Raspberry Pi 3, assumindo que este conhecimento é importante para o desenho de sistemas e software para a IdC. A dissertação contém os resultados da performance para algumas funções da biblioteca OpenSSL, incluindo as funções de hash e cifra mais populares atualmente, colocados em perspetiva contra os resultados obtidos para um computador de secretária. É ainda apresentado um conjunto de testes de desempenho relacionadas aos mecanismos de segurança existentes para sistemas computacionais (e.g., firewall e sistema de detenção de intrusão). Esta dissertação apresenta também uma primeira abordagem para o mapeamento entre requisitos e mecanismos de segurança no contexto específico da IdC, com objetivo de encontrar os requisitos que melhor se adaptam ao ambiente da IdC, conhecendo as suas limitações, em particular a de segurança. No final, é apresentado um protótipo de uma ferramenta para prova de conceito e que dá utilidade a este mapeamento.Due to a very fast paced rythm in technology advancement, security and privacy have been subjects of debate in recent years, both by the industry and scientific community, and by end users. The sharing of information through technological means has been growing in the last decade, also due to the rapid growth and penetration of technology in everyday human life. One of the fastest growing areas is known as Internet of Things (IoT), which encompasses technology that allows one to connect multiple physical and intelligent objects with reduced computing power to the Internet, allowing sharing information with each other. Presently, IoT already plays an important role in many key areas of society (e.g., transport, health, and agriculture), in particular by enabling it to conveniently extract and share information on the state of the environment. However, several security-related problems and challenges have arisen in the last years, clearly demonstrating that IoT lacks a structuring intervention in this dimension, starting from the basics. IoT is in a premature state in terms of security and privacy. There is no general approach (or even concern) to security, and there is no standardized mechanism for protecting data and devices. The hype associated with new IoT systems often degenerates into a reduced time-to-market that benefits functionality and prejudices security engineering. On the other hand, more modest processing and memory specifications for many of the IoT devices create additional challenges in designing and integrating security mechanisms; the fact that many devices are physically accessible without rigid access control as well as the fact that often unencrypted or unsecured wireless technologies are used in the communications of IoT greatly facilitates attacks on such devices by malicious entities. This dissertation begins by analyzing, in a comprehensive manner, some studies already carried out in the field of security for IoT, comparing them and using them as motivation for a study on the performance of security mechanisms in current development platforms for the IoT, specifically in a Raspberry Pi 3, assuming that this knowledge is important for the design of secure IoT systems and software. The dissertation contains the performance results for some OpenSSL library functions, including the most popular hash and cipher functions currently used. These results are compared against the ones obtained for a desktop computer. Also presented is a set of performance tests concerning existing security mechanisms for computational systems (e.g., firewall and intrusion detection system). This dissertation also presents a first approach to the mapping between requirements and security mechanisms in the specific context of IoT, in order to find the requirements that best fit the IoT environment, knowing its limitations, in particular security. In the end, a prototype of a proof-of-concept tool, which shows how this mapping can be useful in practice, is presented