Kinematics of aimed movements in ecological immersive virtual reality: a comparative study with real world

Virtual reality (VR) has recently emerged as a promising technology to rehabilitate upper limb functions after stroke. To promote the recovery of functions, retraining physiological movement patterns is essential. However, it is still unclear whether VR can elicit functional movements that are similar to those performed in the real world (RW). This study aimed to investigate the kinematics of reach-to-grasp and transport movements performed in the real world and immersive VR by examining whether kinematic differences between the two conditions exist and their extent. A within-subject repeated-measures study was conducted. A realistic setup resembling a supermarket shelf unit was built in RW and VR. The analysis compared reaching and transport gestures in VR and RW, also considering potential differences due to: (i) holding the controller needed to interact with virtual items, (ii) hand dominance, and (iii) target positions. Ten healthy young adults were enrolled in the study. Motion data analysis showed that reach-to-grasp and transport required more time in VR, and that holding the controller had no effects. No major differences occurred between the two hands. Joint angles, except for thorax rotation, and hand trajectory curvature were comparable across conditions, suggesting that VR has the potentialities to retrain physiological movement patterns. Results were satisfying, though they did not demonstrate the superiority of ecological environments in eliciting natural gestures. Further studies should determine the extent of kinematic similarity required to obtain functional gains in VR-based upper limb rehabilitation

Semantic and Virtual Reality-Enhanced Configuration of Domestic Environments: The Smart Home Simulator

This paper introduces the Smart Home Simulator, one of the main outcomes of the D4All project. This application takes into account the variety of issues involved in the development of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions, such as the peculiarity of each end-users, appliances, and technologies with their deployment and data-sharing issues. The Smart Home Simulator - a mixed reality application able to support the configuration and customization of domestic environments in AAL systems - leverages on integration capabilities of Semantic Web technologies and the possibility to model relevant knowledge (about both the dwellers and the domestic environment) into formal models. It also exploits Virtual Reality technologies as an efficient means to simplify the configuration of customized AAL environments. The application and the underlying framework will be validated through two different use cases, each one foreseeing the customized configuration of a domestic environment for specific segments of users

An Ontology-Based Framework for a Telehealthcare System to Foster Healthy Nutrition and Active Lifestyle in Older Adults

In recent years, telehealthcare systems (TSs) have become more and more widespread, as they can contribute to promoting the continuity of care and managing chronic conditions efficiently. Most TSs and nutrition recommendation systems require much information to return appropriate suggestions. This work proposes an ontology-based TS, namely HeNuALs, aimed at fostering a healthy diet and an active lifestyle in older adults with chronic pathologies. The system is built on the formalization of users' health conditions, which can be obtained by leveraging existing standards. This allows for modeling different pathologies via reusable knowledge, thus limiting the amount of information needed to retrieve nutritional indications from the system. HeNuALs is composed of (1) an ontological layer that stores patients and their data, food and its characteristics, and physical activity-related data, enabling the inference a series of suggestions based on the effects of foods and exercises on specific health conditions; (2) two applications that allow both the patient and the clinicians to access the data (with different permissions) stored in the ontological layer; and (3) a series of wearable sensors that can be used to monitor physical exercise (provided by the patient application) and to ensure patients' safety. HeNuALs inferences have been validated considering two different use cases. The system revealed the ability to determine suggestions for healthy, adequate, or unhealthy dishes for a patient with respiratory disease and for a patient with diabetes mellitus. Future work foresees the extension of the HeNuALs knowledge base by exploiting automatic knowledge retrieval approaches and validation of the whole system with target users

Design methodology of an active back-support exoskeleton with adaptable backbone-based kinematics

Abstract Manual labor is still strongly present in many industrial contexts (such as aerospace industry). Such operations commonly involve onerous tasks requiring to work in non-ergonomic conditions and to manipulate heavy parts. As a result, work-related musculoskeletal disorders are a major problem to tackle in workplace. In particular, back is one of the most affected regions. To solve such issue, many efforts have been made in the design and control of exoskeleton devices, relieving the human from the task load. Besides upper limbs and lower limbs exoskeletons, back-support exoskeletons have been also investigated, proposing both passive and active solutions. While passive solutions cannot empower the human's capabilities, common active devices are rigid, without the possibility to track the human's spine kinematics while executing the task. The here proposed paper describes a methodology to design an active back-support exoskeleton with backbone-based kinematics. On the basis of the (easily implementable) scissor hinge mechanism, a one-degree of freedom device has been designed. In particular, the resulting device allows tracking the motion of a reference vertebra, i.e., the vertebrae in the correspondence of the connection between the scissor hinge mechanism and the back of the operator. Therefore, the proposed device is capable to adapt to the human posture, guaranteeing the support while relieving the person from the task load. In addition, the proposed mechanism can be easily optimized and realized for different subjects, involving a subject-based design procedure, making possible to adapt its kinematics to track the spine motion of the specific user. A prototype of the proposed device has been 3D-printed to show the achieved kinematics. Preliminary tests for discomfort evaluation show the potential of the proposed methodology, foreseeing extensive subjects-based optimization, realization and testing of the device

“Positive Bike” – An immersive biking experience for combined physical and cognitive training of elderly patients

Previous evidence shows that combined cognitive and physical exercises (dual-task intervention, (I-DT)) potentiates cognitive performance more than either type of single training alone (Lauenroth et al., 2015). Here, we describe the rationale, the design and the implementation of the “Positive Bike”, a fully-immersive virtual reality biking experience for implementing I-DT training protocols in older patients. The system consists of a cycle-ergometer positioned within a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment (CAVE). The system also features a cloud-based platform which allows the therapist to configure the exercise parameters (i.e, duration and load). Using the Positive Bike, the patient can take a virtual ride by physically pedalling at variable paces within a simulated scenario (i.e., a park). During the virtual ride, the patient can be presented with different interactive cognitive exercises (attentional, memory etc). In one of such exercises, for example, the patient has to recognize different animals appearing on the route sides and press a button if such animal has a name beginning with a specific letter. Potential applications of Positive Bike in geriatric wellness and rehabilitation are discussed

Traiettorie migranti: dal progetto SIPROIMI alla ricerca di una autonomia abitativa. Percorsi di uscita dall’accoglienza tra difficoltà, risorse e testimonianze

The research was carried out in the city of Bologna in order to analyze the difficulty in finding a place where to live for people with economic and social problems. The article introduces the concept of home both as a fixed place and as something that includes relational, community and political meanings. The bond between people, society and territory as well as between steadiness and mobility is visible in the migratory phenomenon: how do migrants feel when talking about home and above all what is the link with their place of origin and their migratory project? Could we consider this topic in a perspective of shattered expectation and double absence as suggested by Sayad (2002) while studying the migratory phenomenon? Afterwards the impact of the housing topic for migrants will be analyzed thanks to the interviews of some social operators who decided to share their experience and the tools they use in order to help a person to find an accommodation. Along with the social operators, I interviewed some migrants living in reception centers that reported feelings and problems faced while looking for an accommodation. Further points of views were given by the coordinator of the SIPROIMI project in Bologna and the operators working in the housing office.La ricerca si è sviluppata nella Città Metropolitana di Bologna per analizzare le difficoltà nel reperimento di soluzioni abitative per coloro che versano in condizioni di disagio economico e sociale. L’articolo propone il concetto di casa come bene fisso ma anche come portatore di significati relazionali, comunitari e politici differenti. La lente di ingrandimento del legame tra individui, società e territorio così come tra stabilità e mobilità, sembrerebbe essere il fenomeno migratorio: quali sensazioni evocano nelle persone migranti parole quali abitare e casa in termini di rapporti con la propria terra di origine e progetto migratorio? Possiamo leggere questa tematica in un’ottica di aspettative infrante e di doppia assenza come proposto da Sayad (2002) su questioni legate al fenomeno migratorio? Si analizza poi l’impatto che la tematica ha nella ricerca di soluzioni abitative per coloro che sono al termine del percorso di seconda accoglienza (SIPROIMI). Ciò è stato possibile grazie al confronto con alcuni operatori dell’accoglienza in merito a esperienze e strumenti messi in campo durante quello che viene definito come accompagnamento all’uscita; allo stesso tempo ho raccolto l’esperienza di alcuni migranti beneficiari del progetto SIPROIMI che hanno condiviso preoccupazioni e difficoltà legate alla ricerca di una casa. Ulteriori punti di vista sono stati possibili grazie alle voci del coordinatore del progetto SIPROIMI per la Città Metropolitana di Bologna e delle operatrici che lavorano per il Servizio Abitare

RoomFort: An Ontology-Based Comfort Management Application for Hotels

Business traveling is attracting growing attention due to the expansion of international markets. This fact calls for an increasing attention of the tourism sector toward the needs of business travellers, who often require services that are different from the ones desired by leisure tourists. The application of smart solutions coming from Context Awareness and Ambient Intelligence aimed at promoting guests’ comfort and well-being, also in cases in which they have special needs, represents a promising solution to tackle business travellers’ requirements and thus, to increase hotels attractiveness and incomes. In this context, this work introduces RoomFort, a smart comfort management system aimed at enhancing comfort of hotel room guests and leveraging on semantic representations of comfort, environment, and sensors. RoomFort provides a set of domain ontologies to formalize comfort-related metrics and to exploit the automatic reasoning capabilities provided by Semantic Web technologies, while gathering data through a network of sensors to ensure guests are provided with tailored comfort profiles during their stays in the hotel. Particular focus has been placed on visual comfort, since indoor lighting features constitute one of the main factors influencing the two main activities that most business travellers accomplish in their hotel room: working and relaxing

A protocol for the comparison of reaching gesture kinematics in physical versus immersive virtual reality

Virtual environments are increasingly being used for upper limb rehabilitation in post-stroke patients. However, still there is no clear evidence that the movements performed in virtual reality are comparable to those performed in the physical world from the kinematic point-of-view. The goal of the proposed study is thus to determine if aimed reaching movements made in a 3D ecological and immersive virtual environment – displayed through a Head Mounted Display (HMD) – are comparable to movements performed in the real world. The study foresees the realization of two comparable environmental settings representing the shelf of a supermarket. Three different groups of subjects (healthy young adults, healthy elderly, and post-stroke subjects, n=15 each) are asked to reach 5 times toward 9 targets in 3 different conditions: virtual reality, physical reality, and physical reality while holding a controller. Their movements are tracked with a stereo-photogrammetric motion capture system; movement times, peak velocities, and joint angles are then extracted for analysis. This protocol will allow comparing reaching movements, and also excluding of the effects related to holding a controller. A preliminary trial reveled the feasibility of the protocol, thus the experiment will be carried out in the next months. If results will be encouraging, VR should be considered in rehabilitative treatments as a useful means to elicit patients’ motivation, but also appropriate movement synergies, thus promoting a better recovery of upper limb functions

Customization of domestic environment and physical training supported by virtual reality and semantic technologies: A use-case

In the last years, many AAL applications have been developed to support elderly people in conducting a healthier and safer life in their everyday living environment. This paper describes the design of a domestic environment in which an elderly user can perform a tailored physical exercise through a virtual reality-based system, called Smart Home Simulator. The customization of the services offered to specific target users is achieved through the exploitation of ontologies, which model the users' health condition, the domestic environments, diverse comfort metrics and devices. Through the exploitation of a real use-case foreseeing a 72-year-old frail woman who has to train on a cycle-ergometer, a first prototype of the system-called Bicycle4CaRe-has been realized. It is composed of different commercial devices interacting with each other with the aim of providing the end user with a customized intervention and collecting data about environmental conditions and physiological parameters. These data are monitored in real-Time to ensure safe conditions of training and, at the end of the exercise, they are saved in report files and they are made available to caregivers and clinicians