Using Topic Models to Mine Everyday Object Usage Routines Through Connected IoT Sensors

With the tremendous progress in sensing and IoT infrastructure, it is foreseeable that IoT systems will soon be available for commercial markets, such as in people's homes. In this paper, we present a deployment study using sensors attached to household objects to capture the resourcefulness of three individuals. The concept of resourcefulness highlights the ability of humans to repurpose objects spontaneously for a different use case than was initially intended. It is a crucial element for human health and wellbeing, which is of great interest for various aspects of HCI and design research. Traditionally, resourcefulness is captured through ethnographic practice. Ethnography can only provide sparse and often short duration observations of human experience, often relying on participants being aware of and remembering behaviours or thoughts they need to report on. Our hypothesis is that resourcefulness can also be captured through continuously monitoring objects being used in everyday life. We developed a system that can record object movement continuously and deployed them in homes of three elderly people for over two weeks. We explored the use of probabilistic topic models to analyze the collected data and identify common patterns

SHELDON Smart habitat for the elderly.

An insightful document concerning active and assisted living under different perspectives: Furniture and habitat, ICT solutions and Healthcare

Designing the domestic Internet of Things using a practice-orientated perspective

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of sensing, actuating and networked objects, often discussed as delivering efficiency through machine determined, automated decision making and action to achieve ‘Smartness’ in a logistically based paradigm. When applied to the domestic space these values are touted as beneficially controlling lighting, heating and entertainment to improve efficiency and comfort, while reducing costs. This approach follows the external goods of effectiveness, reducing everything to an objective value/cost proposition; however, the home is a subjectively experienced space incorporating differing values, so this reductive perspective overlooks a wider spectrum of inhabitant’s concerns relating to their daily activities and the domestic space. Furthermore, this approach can supplant involvement in domestic activities by treating these as computable problems to solve, alienating users through automation, a lack of transparency and poor understanding of the reasoning behind machine decision making. Existing attempts to address this topic indicate Techno-Centric approaches impact on understanding and engagement with the domestic space; Human-Centric perspectives focus on supporting people’s subjective experiences by prioritising their activities, sense-making and sensory experiences within the design process; Beyond Human-Centric IoT perspectives broaden this understanding to propose non-hierarchical, flat ontologies for the IoT and the implications this has on integrating human/non-human agency in the IoT, generally and domestically. This supported an approach utilising Practice Theory, a development of organising concepts for theorising social life, with sociality dependent on activities conducted with materials to develop a coherent sense of self and which understands place as a meshwork of human/non-human agency. Practice Theory is applied within a Design Research approach using a synergistic Participatory Action Research (PAR) / Participatory Design (PD) process. Exploring Domestic Practices contextualised the IoT through a range of methods including interactive installations, interviews and design workshops, uncovering participant attitudes towards the IoT, generating Practice Themes and specific examples of practices and constituent elements. These acted as User Generated Values (UGV) in a Values-Led PD process to inform the project pathway and the conceptualisation of a Practice-Oriented IoT through PAR’s Action-Reflection spirals. Additionally, a parallel PD process explored the effective communication of UGV within Professional Design Practice (PDP) workshops with the intent of reducing communicative distance between end-users and developers, supporting communication of user’s attitudes towards the IoT and Practice within PDP through inclusion as guiding values. Models of the IoT balancing Practice and technical concerns, workshops and toolkit were developed iteratively, leading to an outcome modelling the IoT and Practice within a flat ontology. Through this, and by embedding Practice within the IoT itself, IoT agency was reframed from automation towards assistiveness in Practice and IoT values shifted from efficiency in external goods of effectiveness towards internally derived goods of excellence, supporting skill development, engagement and reflection on action. This identifies the value of using PAR and PD to consider people’s values, goals and existing practices when developing the domestic IoT. This was particularly valuable in exploring Practice to understand people’s activities in the home and contextualise attitudes towards the IoT. This informed the development of a framework balancing the IoT’s technological nature with people’s activities and values, a system guided by Practice elements reciprocally informing and supporting participant engagement in dynamically developing domestic practices

Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Interacting with Smart Objects 2015

These are the Proceedings of the 4th IUI Workshop on Interacting with Smart Objects. Objects that we use in our everyday life are expanding their restricted interaction capabilities and provide functionalities that go far beyond their original functionality. They feature computing capabilities and are thus able to capture information, process and store it and interact with their environments, turning them into smart objects

The Internet of Things: Reflections on the Past, Present and Future from a User Centered and Smart Environment Perspective

This paper introduces the Internet-of-Things (IoT) and describes its evolution from a concept proposed by Kevin Ashton in 1999 through its public emergence in 2005 in a United Nations ITU report entitled “The Internet of Things”, to the present day where IoT devices are available as off-the-shelf products from major manufacturers. Using a systematic study of public literature, the paper presents a five-phase categorisation of the development of the Internet-of-Things from its beginnings to the present day. Four mini case studies are included to illustrate some of the issues involved. Finally, the paper discusses some of the big issues facing future developers and marketers of Internet-of-Things based products ranging from artificial intelligence (AI) through to customer privacy and acceptance finishing with an optimistic assessment of the future of the Internet-of-Things

Designing Tools for Reflection: a concept-driven approach

We are surrounded by objects. We often use and interact with them to do our daily activities. They do not only support us and augment our abilities, but also, can be considered as companions of our thoughts. We think with objects, because they contain information about us: about our memories, experiences, emotions, and activities as Sherry Turkle highlights (2011). Furthermore, our everyday objects are increasingly computed, smart and connected to the Internet. They are able to collect data, elaborate and provide real-time feedbacks. These feedbacks cannot only support us to improve our activities, but also enables critical thinking and reflection on our actions. This resonates very well with what Donald Schön meant by having reflective conversation with materials at hand (1983;1996). He highlighted that materials –artifacts– of a situation talk back to designer, so they enable and support reflection in action of designing. So, how about if we consider that our daily objects can talk back and make us think on our actions in order to consider alternatives? This dissertation, is an attempt to consider this opportunity. The nature of this dissertation is mostly conceptual and its scope is defining the physical and behavioral characteristics of smart artifacts able to provoke thoughts and reflection in user leading to a conscious behavior change. I sought to use existing theories about reflective thinking in HCI and beyond, as valuable sources for developing design concept. I have been inspired by the Concept-Driven interaction design research (Stolterman and Wiberg 2011) and created and defined the whole structure of this dissertation based on this methodology, from the definition of the concept – Tool for Reflection – to the construction of a theoretical model from the design outcome –Make Me Think model. During this process, I used different methods such as conducting literature analysis, context analysis, survey, participatory session and prototyping. The sustainable urban mobility behaviors in the city of Turin (Italy) as the target behavior and home as the place for using Tool for Reflection have been chosen for this research. In particular, informed by architectural studies, I conceptualized In-Between Places as a category of places that connect home places to city places. I suggested to consider such areas as suitable places for evoking thoughts on urban mobility behaviors, in home. This dissertation provides a theoretical perspective with which to guide the design of smart objects that evoke reflection. It first provides a set of characteristics of a Tool for Reflection as a physical artifact. Then it provides a theoretical model, considering the relationship between a Tool for Reflection and a user. The key contributions include the design of the Sóle, a smart lamp, not only as an example of a Tool for Reflection with its theoretically pre-defined characteristics, but also as an instrument for iterating from design to the theory. The overall approach, the methodology and the findings should be of interest in particular to researchers working on design for reflection in the HCI. More broadly this dissertation can be of interest of researchers in the HCI, whose research is around designing artifacts, both as an ‘outcome’ and as an ‘instrument’ of the research process

Diseño de un sistema ciberfísico aplicado al ámbito de la salud.

Los Sistemas Ciber-Físicos (CPS) tienen la capacidad de coordinar el tratamiento de datos y sistemas de comunicación con el seguimiento y control de las entidades que se encuentran en el entorno físico. Los ejemplos de CPS incluyen sistemas de conducción autónoma, sistemas de monitorización médica, modelos de consumo energético inteligente, sistemas de control de procesos, monitorización de procesos de fabricación, monitorización de infraestructuras y carreteras, sistemas de robótica, domótica y pilotos automáticos aeronáuticos. Estos sistemas están formados por un conjunto de dispositivos como: sensores, unidades de procesamiento, dispositivos de comunicación y en muchos casos servicios en la nube. Debido a la naturaleza de los distintos tipos de hardware un CPS puede estar formado por múltiples dispositivos con diferentes arquitecturas, protocolos e interfaces y en una gran parte de los casos los CPS son sistemas híbridos y distribuidos.Esta tesis presenta el diseño de un CPS centrado en el entorno de la salud. El CPS consta de un armario inteligente de cocina. Este armario posee internamente una placa de procesamiento Raspberry PI que se encarga de recopilar las aperturas y los cierres que se efectúen en este. La función principal del armario es estimar síntomas de aparición de enfermedades neurodegenerativas como el Alzheimer.La tesis también presenta otros elementos en la elaboración de un CPS como medidas de seguridad para evitar ataques de denegación de servicios (DoS) de tal manera que el normal funcionamiento no se vea comprometido. Otro elemento que se tiene en cuenta es la manera de interactuar con el usuario, el cual es objeto de estudio según el tipo de usuario que esté usando el CPS. Finalmente se propone un modelo de consumo energético, el cual se basa en la rutina del usuario para efectuar un consumo de energía en los momentos más álgidos del día en relación a la rutina diaria del usuario.El CPS fue evaluado en un entorno acondicionado y controlado con 23 participantes voluntarios. La fase de evaluación se realizó en 2 pasos en los cuales los voluntarios tuvieron que memorizar y extraer alimentos según el examinador iba indicando, en cada paso se usaron 15 tipos de alimentos distintos. Una vez que se realizaron todas las extracciones cada voluntario tuvo que realizar un test bien conocido de caras y nombres. En este test los participantes deben recordar una cara asociada a un determinado nombre. Un total de 30 caras y nombres son visionados por los voluntarios de manera que cada pareja debe ser memorizado. La etapa final del test de caras y nombres consistió en preguntar a qué cara le pertenece un nombre de 4 posibles. Una vez los resultados de ambos test fueron obtenidos, se contrastaron mediante varios test estadísticos. El resultado arrojó una correlación estadísticamente significativa, esto significa que al ser el test de caras y nombres un test bien conocido y comprobado para medir la memoria, el CPS presentado también posee la misma características.Finalmente, en la tesis se expone cómo los componentes interactivos, eléctricos y de seguridad son diseñados y acoplados para obtener el CPS propuesto.Esta Tesis Doctoral se presenta como compendio de publicaciones editadas, de acuerdo al extracto de 25/06/2020 del Consejo de Gobierno de la Universidad de Zaragoza por el que se aprueba el Reglamento Sobre Tesis Doctorales (Título IV, Capítulo III, artículo 20).<br /

Enhanced Living Environments

This open access book was prepared as a Final Publication of the COST Action IC1303 “Algorithms, Architectures and Platforms for Enhanced Living Environments (AAPELE)”. The concept of Enhanced Living Environments (ELE) refers to the area of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) that is more related with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). Effective ELE solutions require appropriate ICT algorithms, architectures, platforms, and systems, having in view the advance of science and technology in this area and the development of new and innovative solutions that can provide improvements in the quality of life for people in their homes and can reduce the financial burden on the budgets of the healthcare providers. The aim of this book is to become a state-of-the-art reference, discussing progress made, as well as prompting future directions on theories, practices, standards, and strategies related to the ELE area. The book contains 12 chapters and can serve as a valuable reference for undergraduate students, post-graduate students, educators, faculty members, researchers, engineers, medical doctors, healthcare organizations, insurance companies, and research strategists working in this area

A Framework for Industry 4.0

The potential of the Industry 4.0 will allow the national industry to develop all kinds of procedures, especially in terms of competitive differentiation. The prospects and motivations behind Industry 4.0 are related to the management that is essentially geared towards industrial internet, to the integrated analysis and use of data, to the digitalization of products and services, to new disruptive business models and to the cooperation within the value chain. It is through the integration of Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), into the maintenance process that it is possible to carry out a continuous monitoring of industrial machines, as well as to apply advanced techniques for predictive and proactive maintenance. The present work is based on the MANTIS project, aiming to construct a specific platform for the proactive maintenance of industrial machines, targeting particularly the case of GreenBender ADIRA Steel Sheet. In other words, the aim is to reduce maintenance costs, increase the efficiency of the process and consequently the profit. Essentially, the MANTIS project is a multinational research project, where the CISTER Research Unit plays a key role, particularly in providing the communications infrastructure for one MANTIS Pilot. The methodology is based on a follow-up study, which is jointly carried with the client, as well as within the scope of the implementation of the ADIRA Pilot. The macro phases that are followed in the present work are: 1) detailed analysis of the business needs; 2) preparation of the architecture specification; 3) implementation/development; 4) tests and validation; 5) support; 6) stabilization; 7) corrective and evolutionary maintenance; and 8) final project analysis and corrective measures to be applied in future projects. The expected results of the development of such project are related to the integration of the industrial maintenance process, to the continuous monitoring of the machines and to the application of advanced techniques of preventive and proactive maintenance of industrial machines, particularly based on techniques and good practices of the Software Engineering area and on the integration of Cyber-Physical Systems.O potencial desenvolvido pela Indústria 4.0 dotará a indústria nacional de capacidades para desenvolver todo o tipo de procedimentos, especialmente a nível da diferenciação competitiva. As perspetivas e as motivações por detrás da Indústria 4.0 estão relacionadas com uma gestão essencialmente direcionada para a internet industrial, com uma análise integrada e utilização de dados, com a digitalização de produtos e de serviços, com novos modelos disruptivos de negócio e com uma cooperação horizontal no âmbito da cadeia de valor. É através da integração dos sistemas ciber-físicos no processo de manutenção que é possível proceder a um monitoramento contínuo das máquinas, tal como à aplicação de técnicas avançadas para a manutenção preditiva e pró-ativa das mesmas. O presente trabalho é baseado no projeto MANTIS, objetivando, portanto, a construção de uma plataforma específica para a manutenção pró-ativa das máquinas industriais, neste caso em concreto das prensas, que serão as máquinas industriais analisadas ao longo do presente trabalho. Dito de um outro modo, objetiva-se, através de uma plataforma em específico, reduzir todos os custos da sua manutenção, aumentando, portanto, os lucros industriais advindos da produção. Resumidamente, o projeto MANTIS consiste num projeto de investigação multinacional, onde a Unidade de Investigação CISTER desenvolve um papel fundamental, particularmente no fornecimento da infraestrutura de comunicação no Piloto MANTIS. A metodologia adotada é baseada num estudo de acompanhamento, realizado em conjunto com o cliente, e no âmbito da implementação do Piloto da ADIRA. As macro fases que são compreendidas por esta metodologia, e as quais serão seguidas, são: 1) análise detalhada das necessidades de negócio; 2) preparação da especificação da arquitetura; 3) implementação/desenvolvimento; 4) testes e validação; 5) suporte; 6) estabilização; 7) manutenção corretiva e evolutiva; e 8) análise final do projeto e medidas corretivas a aplicar em projetos futuros. Os resultados esperados com o desenvolvimento do projeto estão relacionados com a integração do processo de manutenção industrial, a monitorização contínua das máquinas e a aplicação de técnicas avançadas de manutenção preventiva e pós-ativa das máquinas, especialmente com base em técnicas e boas práticas da área de Engenharia de Software