Near Eyes-Free Chauffeur Computer Interaction with Chording and Visual Text Mnemonics

Modern cars are equipped with advanced technology requiring cognitively complex operation that is reliant on the user’s visual attention. It is therefore hazardous for drivers to operate such devices while driving. In this paper a user interface interaction style for in-car user interfaces are proposed. Users interact with the in-car computer using three chording keys and chording pattern sequences are derived based on visual mnemonics. Cases are illustrated for an in-car multimedia system, a mobile phone and a GPS-navigation system. Experimental results demonstrate that the technique is easy to learn, efficient to use and require low visual attention

INTELLIGENT ENVIRONMENTAL SENSING WITH AN UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEM IN A WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORK

This paper proposes a novel environmental monitoring mechanism to integrate recentlyestablished development of an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) with WSNs for remote monitoring. The high mobility of UASs can solve the limitations associated with using WSNs in hazardous areas. In this paper, the WSN node, the Wireless Environmental Monitoring Station (WEMS), is based on ZigBee protocol for long-duration monitoring. Furthermore, to ensure the integrity of collected environmental data, an algorithm is designed in WEMS for verification. Finally, a detailed analysis of packet transmission efficiency based on ranges of flight distance is proposed to examine the effect of environmental monitoring

Towards harmonious East-West educational partnerships: a study of cultural differences between Taiwanese and Norwegian engineering students

The collaboration activities between educational institutions in the East and the West are on the increase as an increasingly globalized economy requires graduates to have the skills to work across cultural divides. Such collaborations are difficult and require patience. One challenge is that students or teachers may have misconceptions about aspects of the other culture that may cause problems. This study sets out to identify what values students in typical Eastern and Western societies associate with a good student, good student behavior, good teachers and good lectures with the purpose to identify discrepancies. This study is based on the results of a pair-wise ranking questionnaire completed by 233 Taiwanese and Norwegian students of both engineering and non-technical subjects. The results confirm some established beliefs regarding culturally related differences. However, several issues were found to be culturally neutral, and cultural differences were identified for several issues that were predicted to be culturally neutral. The results of this study may be useful to educators involved in East–West internationalization

Studies or Leisure? : a Cross-cultural Comparison of Taiwanese and Norwegian Engineering Students' Preferences for University Life

An insight into students' preferences and expectations of life at university is useful when trying to understand drop-out percentages and design study programs, especially in the global competition for students. This study focuses on Taiwanese and Norwegian students' preferences for life and activities at university. Hofstede's model was used to predict culture-related differences. A pairwise decision questionnaire was used to conduct measurements. A universal trend is that teamwork was considered most important, and teachers were considered to be less important. The most noticeable culture differences were that Taiwanese students preferred non-curricular values and Norwegian students preferred curricular values. The study discipline had little impact on students' preferences

An Efficient Management System for Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks have garnered considerable attention recently. Networks typically have many sensor nodes, and are used in commercial, medical, scientific, and military applications for sensing and monitoring the physical world. Many researchers have attempted to improve wireless sensor network management efficiency. A Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)-based sensor network management system was developed that is a convenient and effective way for managers to monitor and control sensor network operations. This paper proposes a novel WSNManagement system that can show the connections stated of relationships among sensor nodes and can be used for monitoring, collecting, and analyzing information obtained by wireless sensor networks. The proposed network management system uses collected information for system configuration. The function of performance analysis facilitates convenient management of sensors. Experimental results show that the proposed method enhances the alive rate of an overall sensor node system, reduces the packet lost rate by roughly 5%, and reduces delay time by roughly 0.2 seconds. Performance analysis demonstrates that the proposed system is effective for wireless sensor network management

Multi-Hop Routing Mechanism for Reliable Sensor Computing

Current research on routing in wireless sensor computing concentrates on increasing the service lifetime, enabling scalability for large number of sensors and supporting fault tolerance for battery exhaustion and broken nodes. A sensor node is naturally exposed to various sources of unreliable communication channels and node failures. Sensor nodes have many failure modes, and each failure degrades the network performance. This work develops a novel mechanism, called Reliable Routing Mechanism (RRM), based on a hybrid cluster-based routing protocol to specify the best reliable routing path for sensor computing. Table-driven intra-cluster routing and on-demand inter-cluster routing are combined by changing the relationship between clusters for sensor computing. Applying a reliable routing mechanism in sensor computing can improve routing reliability, maintain low packet loss, minimize management overhead and save energy consumption. Simulation results indicate that the reliability of the proposed RRM mechanism is around 25% higher than that of the Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) and ad hoc On-demand Distance Vector routing (AODV) mechanisms

Small-Size Humanoid Soccer Robot Design for FIRA HuroSot

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