Emotions detection on an ambient intelligent system using wearable devices

In this paper we present an Ambient Intelligent System, the iGenda, and the integration of a wearable device. The aim is to detect emotional states through the wearable device and ultimately represent and manage the social emotion of a group of entities. The advantage of this action is that its usability is in line with retirement homes and similar places, where the community is extended and an harmonious environment is imperative. The iGenda serves has the visual interface and the information centre, receiving the information from the wearable device and managing the community emotion by sending information to the care-receivers, caregivers, or changing home parameters (like music or lighting) to achieve an specific emotion (such as calm or excitement). Thus the goal is to provide an affective system that directly interacts with humans by discreetly improving their lifestyle.FCT - Fuel Cell Technologies Program (UID/CEC/00319/2013)info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Deliberative Context-Aware Ambient Intelligence System for Assisted Living Homes

Monitoring wellbeing and stress is one of the problems covered by ambient intelligence, as stress is a significant cause of human illnesses directly affecting our emotional state. The primary aim was to propose a deliberation architecture for an ambient intelligence healthcare application. The architecture provides a plan for comforting stressed seniors suffering from negative emotions in an assisted living home and executes the plan considering the environment's dynamic nature. Literature was reviewed to identify the convergence between deliberation and ambient intelligence and the latter's latest healthcare trends. A deliberation function was designed to achieve context-aware dynamic human-robot interaction, perception, planning capabilities, reactivity, and context-awareness with regard to the environment. A number of experimental case studies in a simulated assisted living home scenario were conducted to demonstrate the approach's behavior and validity. The proposed methods were validated to show classification accuracy. The validation showed that the deliberation function has effectively achieved its deliberative objectives

Emotions detection on an ambient intelligent system using wearable devices

This paper presents the Emotional Smart Wristband and its integration with the iGenda. The aim is to detect emotional states of a group of entities through the wristband and send the social emotion value to the iGenda so it may change the home environment and notify the caregivers. This project is advantageous to communities of elderly people, like retirement homes, where a harmonious environment is imperative and where the number of inhabitants keeps increasing. The iGenda provides the visual interface and the information center, receiving the information from the Emotional Smart Wristband and tries achieve a specific emotion (such as calm or excitement). Thus, the goal is to provide an affective system that directly interacts with humans by discreetly improving their lifestyle. In this paper, it is described the wristband in depth and the data models, and is provided an evaluation of them performed by real individuals and the validation of this evaluation.- This work is supported by COMPETE, Portugal: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologi, Portugal a within the projects UID/CEC/00319/2013 and Post-Doc scholarship SFRH/BPD/102696/2014 (Angelo Costa) This work is partially supported by the MINECO/FEDER, Spain TIN2015-65515-C4-1-R and AP2013-01276 awarded to Jaime-Andres Rincon

A low-cost cognitive assistant

In this paper, we present in depth the hardware components of a low-cost cognitive assistant. The aim is to detect the performance and the emotional state that elderly people present when performing exercises. Physical and cognitive exercises are a proven way of keeping elderly people active, healthy, and happy. Our goal is to bring to people that are at their homes (or in unsupervised places) an assistant that motivates them to perform exercises and, concurrently, monitor them, observing their physical and emotional responses. We focus on the hardware parts and the deep learning models so that they can be reproduced by others. The platform is being tested at an elderly people care facility, and validation is in process.This work was partly supported by the FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnología) through the Post-Doc scholarship SFRH/BPD/102696/2014 (A. Costa), by the Generalitat Valenciana (PROMETEO/2018/002), and by the Spanish Government (RTI2018-095390-B-C31)

A new emotional robot assistant that facilitates human interaction and persuasion

The development of robots that are truly sociable requires understanding how human interactions can be applied to the interaction between humans and robots. A sociable robot must be able to interact with people taking into account aspects like verbal and non-verbal communications (emotions, postures, gestures). This work presents a social robot which main goal is to provide assistance to older people in carrying out their daily activities (through suggestions or reminders). In addition, the robot presents non-verbal communications like perceiving emotions and displaying human identifiable emotions in order to express empathy. A prototype of the robot is being tested in a daycare center in the northern area of Portugal.This work is partially supported by the MINECO/FEDER TIN2015-65515-C4-1-R and the FPI Grant AP2013-01276 awarded to Jaime-Andres Rincon. This work is supported by COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER-007043 and FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia within the projects UID/CEC/00319/2013 and Post-Doc scholarship SFRH/BPD/102696/2014 (Angelo Costa)

EMERALD—Exercise Monitoring Emotional Assistant

The increase in the elderly population in today’s society entails the need for new policies to maintain an adequate level of care without excessively increasing social spending. One of the possible options is to promote home care for the elderly. In this sense, this paper introduces a personal assistant designed to help elderly people in their activities of daily living. This system, called EMERALD, is comprised of a sensing platform and different mechanisms for emotion detection and decision-making that combined produces a cognitive assistant that engages users in Active Aging. The contribution of the paper is twofold—on the one hand, the integration of low-cost sensors that among other characteristics allows for detecting the emotional state of the user at an affordable cost; on the other hand, an automatic activity suggestion module that engages the users, mainly oriented to the elderly, in a healthy lifestyle. Moreover, by continuously correcting the system using the on-line monitoring carried out through the sensors integrated in the system, the system is personalized, and, in broad terms, emotionally intelligent. A functional prototype is being currently tested in a daycare centre in the northern area of Portugal where preliminary tests show positive results.This research was partially funded by the Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia (FCT) within the projects UID/CEC/00319/2019 and Post-Doc Grant SFRH/BPD/102696/2014 (Angelo Costa). This work is also partially funded by the MINECO/FEDER TIN2015-65515-C4-1-R and RISEWISE (RISEWomen with disabilities In Social Engagement) EU project under Agreement No. 690874.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

A meta-analysis of resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta (REBOA) or open aortic cross-clamping by resuscitative thoracotomy in non-compressible torso hemorrhage patients

Background The objective of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to determine the effect of REBOA, compared to resuscitative thoracotomy, on mortality and among non-compressible torso hemorrhage trauma patients. Methods Relevant articles were identified by a literature search in MEDLINE and EMBASE. We included studies involving trauma patients suffering non-compressible torso hemorrhage. Studies were eligible if they evaluated REBOA and compared it to resuscitative thoracotomy. Two investigators independently assessed articles for inclusion and exclusion criteria and selected studies for final analysis. We conducted meta-analysis using random effect models. Results We included three studies in our systematic review. These studies included a total of 1276 patients. An initial analysis found that although lower in REBOA-treated patients, the odds of mortality did not differ between the compared groups (OR 0.42; 95% CI 0.17–1.03). Sensitivity analysis showed that the risk of mortality was significantly lower among patients who underwent REBOA, compared to those who underwent resuscitative thoracotomy (RT) (RR 0.81; 95% CI 0.68–0.97). Conclusion Our meta-analysis, mainly from observational data, suggests a positive effect of REBOA on mortality among non-compressible torso hemorrhage patients. However, these results deserve further investigation

EmIR: An emotional intelligent robot assistant

The development of robots that are truly sociable requires understanding how human interactions can be applied to the interaction between humans and robots. A sociable robot must be able to interact with people taking into account aspects like verbal and non-verbal communications (emotions, postures, gestures). This work presents a social robot which main goal is to provide assistance to older people in carrying out their daily activities (through suggestions or reminders). In addition, the robot presents non-verbal communications like perceiving emotions and displaying human identifiable emotions in order to express empathy. A prototype of the robot is being tested in a daycare centre in the northern area of Portugal.This work is partially supported by the MINECO/FEDER TIN2015-65515-C4- 1-R and the FPI grant AP2013-01276 awarded to Jaime-Andres Rincon. Angelo Costa thanks the FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia for the PostDoc grant SFRH/BPD/102696/2014. This work is supported by FCT within the projects UID/CEC/00319/2013 and COMPETE: POCI-01-0145-FEDER007043

A socially assistive robot for long-term cardiac rehabilitation in the real world

What are the benefits of using a socially assistive robot for long-term cardiac rehabilitation? To answer this question we designed and conducted a real-world long-term study, in collaboration with medical specialists, at the Fundacion Cardioinfantil-Instituto de Cardiologia clinic (Bogota, Colombia) lasting 2.5 years. The study took place within the context of the outpatient phase of patients' cardiac rehabilitation programme and aimed to compare the patients' progress and adherence in the conventional cardiac rehabilitation programme (control condition) against rehabilitation supported by a fully autonomous socially assistive robot which continuously monitored the patients during exercise to provide immediate feedback and motivation based on sensory measures (robot condition). The explicit aim of the social robot is to improve patient motivation and increase adherence to the programme to ensure a complete recovery. We recruited 15 patients per condition. The cardiac rehabilitation programme was designed to last 36 sessions (18 weeks) per patient. The findings suggest that robot increases adherence (by 13.3%) and leads to faster completion of the programme. In addition, the patients assisted by the robot had more rapid improvement in their recovery heart rate, better physical activity performance and a higher improvement in cardiovascular functioning, which indicate a successful cardiac rehabilitation programme performance. Moreover, the medical staff and the patients acknowledged that the robot improved the patient motivation and adherence to the programme, supporting its potential in addressing the major challenges in rehabilitation programmes