Automatically Adapting Home Lighting to Assist Visually Impaired Children

For visually impaired children, activities like finding everyday items, locating favourite toys and moving around the home can be challenging. Assisting them during these activities is important because it promotes independence and encourages them to use and develop their remaining visual function. We describe our work towards a system that adapts the lighting conditions at home to help visually impaired children with everyday tasks. We discuss scenarios that show how they may benefit from adaptive lighting, report on our progress and describe our planned future work and evaluation

Towards a Multimodal Adaptive Lighting System for Visually Impaired Children

Visually impaired children often have difficulty with everyday activities like locating items, e.g. favourite toys, and moving safely around the home. It is important to assist them during activities like these because it can promote independence from adults and helps to develop skills. Our demonstration shows our work towards a multimodal sensing and output system that adapts the lighting conditions at home to help visually impaired children with such tasks

Textured Surfaces for Ultrasound Haptic Displays

We demonstrate a technique for rendering textured haptic surfaces in mid-air, using an ultrasound haptic display. Our technique renders tessellated 3D `haptic' shapes with different waveform properties, creating surfaces with distinct perceptions

Continuous chlorine detection in drinking water and a review of new detection methods

Chlorination is necessary to prevent epidemics of waterborne disease however excess chlorination is wasteful, produces harmful disinfection byproducts, exacerbates corrosion and causes deterioration in aesthetic qualities, leading to consumer complaints. Residual chlorine must be continuously monitored to prevent both under- and over-chlorination and factors including pH, temperature and fouling must be considered as these also affect the disinfectant strength of residual chlorine. Standard methods used by water utility companies to determine residual chlorine concentration in drinking water distribution systems are appraised and found to be unsuitable for continuous monitoring. A selection of newly developed methods for residual chlorine analysis are evaluated against performance criteria, to direct research towards the development of chlorine sensors that are suitable for use in water systems. It is found that fouling tolerance in particular is generally not well understood for these selected sensor technologies and that long-term trials in real systems is recommended

HaptiRead: Reading Braille as Mid-Air Haptic Information

Mid-air haptic interfaces have several advantages - the haptic information is delivered directly to the user, in a manner that is unobtrusive to the immediate environment. They operate at a distance, thus easier to discover; they are more hygienic and allow interaction in 3D. We validate, for the first time, in a preliminary study with sighted and a user study with blind participants, the use of mid-air haptics for conveying Braille. We tested three haptic stimulation methods, where the haptic feedback was either: a) aligned temporally, with haptic stimulation points presented simultaneously (Constant); b) not aligned temporally, presenting each point independently (Point-By-Point); or c) a combination of the previous methodologies, where feedback was presented Row-by-Row. The results show that mid-air haptics is a viable technology for presenting Braille characters, and the highest average accuracy (94% in the preliminary and 88% in the user study) was achieved with the Point-by-Point method.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables, DIS'2

A Survey on Legionnaires Disease and Benefits of Using IoT and Artificial Intelligence for Control Measures

In this paper, we summarized Legionella, its outbreaks, detection techniques, compliance, and traditional control measures. We proposed the benefits of using a Remote temperature monitoring and tap flushing system that can be implemented with the help of Internet of Things (IOT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Legionella bacteria is usually found in all types of water systems and soil. Humans are affected by breathing Aerosols from the infected sources. Figure 2 shows the major sources of Legionella and its routes to human exposure. It is asymptomatic in most individuals but can cause Pontiac fever, Legionnaires disease and can lead to severe Pneumonia. People with weak immune systems, the old aged and smokers are most susceptible to legionaries' disease. There are no distinct symptoms for legionnaires disease, so it is unnoticed or neglected most of the time. Legionellaceae family consists of more than 50 species of which Legionella Pneumophila is the most common serogroup which causes Legionnaires disease. Temperature between 20°C to 50°C is most suitable for its growth. Artificial water systems like water tanks, Domestic water distribution systems, Spa pools, Cooling towers are some of the major sources of legionella. Legionella bacteria grows on Biofilms and stagnant water in supply pipes and water systems. There is detailed guidance and legislation to maintain these systems to prevent legionella outbreaks. A remote temperature monitoring and a remote outlet flushing solution can help the legionella organizations to keep the water systems compliant and safe from Legionella. A sensor network for remote monitoring of water temperatures and initiating outlet flushes can help reduce the manual efforts