Online estimation of rollator user condition using spatiotemporal gait parameters

Assistance to people during rehabilitation has to be adapted to their needs. Too little help can lead to frustration and stress in the user; an excess of help may lead to low participation and loss of residual skills. Robotic rollators may adapt assistance. The main challenge to cope with this issue is to estimate how much help is needed on the fly, because it depends not only on the person condition, but also on the specific situation that they are negotiating. Clinical scales provide a global condition based estimation, but no local estimator based on punctual needs. Condition also changes in time, so clinical scales need to be recalculated again and again. In this paper we propose a novel approach to estimate users’ condition in a continuous way via a robotic rollator. Our work focuses on predicting the value of the well known Tinetti Mobility test from spatiotemporal gait parameters obtained from our platform while users walk. This prediction provides continuous insight on the condition of the user and could be used to modify the amount of help provided. The proposed method has been validated with 19 volunteers at a local hospital that use a rollator for rehabilitation. All volunteers presented some physical or mental disabilities. Our results sucessfully show a high correlation of spatiotemporal gait parameters with Tinetti Mobility test gait (R2 = 0.7) and Tinetti Mobility test balance (R2 = 0.6).Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

A cane-based low cost sensor to implement attention mechanisms in telecare robots

Telepresence robots have been recently used for Comprehensive Geriatric Assessment (CGA). Since the robot can not track a person continuously, there are several strategies to decide when to check them, from cyclic checks to simple requests from users and/or caregivers. In order to adapt to the user needs and condition, it is preferable to perform CGA as soon as regularities appear. However, this requires detection of potential issues in users to offer immediate service. In this work we propose a new low cost force sensor system to detect user’s condition and attract attention of CGA robots, so they can perform a full examination on a need basis. The main advantages of this system are: i) it can be attached to any standard commercial cane; ii) its power consumption is very reduced; and iii) it provides continuous information as long as the user walks. It has been tested with several elderly volunteers in care facilities. Results have proven that the sensor readings are indeed correlated with the users’ condition.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tec

Learning-Based Adaptation for Personalized Mobility Assistance

Mobility assistance is of key importance for people with disabilities to remain autonomous in their preferred environments. In severe cases, assistance can be provided by robotized wheelchairs that can perform complex maneuvers and/or correct the user’s commands. User’s acceptance is of key importance, as some users do not like their commands to be modified. This work presents a solution to improve acceptance. It consists of making the robot learn how the user drives so corrections will not be so noticeable to the user. Case Based Reasoning (CBR) is used to acquire a user’s driving model reactive level. Experiments with volunteers at Fondazione Santa Lucia (FSL) have proven that, indeed, this customized approach at assistance increases acceptance by the user.This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministerio de Educacion y Ciencia (MEC), Project TEC2011-29106-C02-01. The authors would like to thank Santa Lucia Hospedale and all volunteers for their kind cooperation and Sauer Medica for providing the power wheelchair

Heterogeneous Device Networking for an AmI Environment

Assisted living environments involve a wide range of different devices. Most of them are commercially available, but typically associated to standard domotics buses not compatible with each other. Besides, in many cases it is desirable to integrate new devices to a system that might not support the installed bus protocol. Interconnection between devices is far from simple, specially because domotic buses are often proprietary. The most popular solution to this problem is to export information to Ethernet as a system meeting point, but it is not always simple and accessibility in proprietary buses is limited. This paper proposes a method to integrate a variety of platforms through a shared memory interface, including a proprietary bus, commercial devices and ad hoc systems. Its main novelty is that compatibility between dif ferent standards is achieved without additional expensive hardware.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Towards a Shared Control Navigation Function:Efficiency Based Command Modulation

This paper presents a novel shared control algorithm for robotized wheelchairs. The proposed algorithm is a new method to extend autonomous navigation techniques into the shared control domain. It reactively combines user’s and robot’s commands into a continuous function that approximates a classic Navigation Function (NF) by weighting input commands with NF constraints. Our approach overcomes the main drawbacks of NFs -calculus complexity and limitations on environment modeling- so it can be used in dynamic unstructured environments. It also benefits from NF properties: convergence to destination, smooth paths and safe navigation. Due to the user’s contribution to control, our function is not strictly a NF, so we call it a pseudo-navigation function (PNF) instead.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Reactive adapted assistance for wheelchair navigation based on a standard skill profile

Mobility assistance for wheelchair navigation is typically based on the shared control paradigm. Traditionally, control swaps from user to machine depending either on a trigger mechanism or on a explicit user request. Alternatively, in collaborative control approaches both user and robot contribute to control at the same time. However, in this case it is necessary to decide how much impact the user has in the emergent command. User weight has been estimated based on his/her command efficiency or on the environment complexity. However, the user’s command efficiency may change abruptly, whereas the environment complexity depends on the user’s skills. In this work we propose a collaborative control approach where this weight is determined by the user’s ability to cope with the situation at hand with respect to an average person. This estimation relies on an standard navigation skill profile extracted from a large number of traces from real users. This approach has two major advantages: i) the user receives more assistance only when needed according to his/her own skills; and ii) we avoid an excess of assistance to prevent loss of residual skills. The proposed system has been tested with a group of people with disabilities. Tests prove that resulting efficiencies are similar to other collaborative control approaches although the amount of assistance is reduced.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

El hogar inteligente

La sociedad actual ha acogido la tecnología con los brazos abiertos : pocos subsistirían un día sin móvil y hay quien tiene un televisor mayor que su salón. Muchos vivimos en hogares tecnológicos, pero ¿vivimos ya en hogares inteligentes

Determinación de Cryptosporidium parvum en terneros de la Parroquia El Valle del Cantón Cuenca

La presente investigación, fue realizada dentro del área de parasitología y dirigida al ámbito de la salud pública, considerando que el problema se origina cuando el parásito Cryptosporidium spp infecta el tracto gastrointestinal de mamíferos domésticos y silvestres, pudiendo incluso infectar al hombre; su forma contaminante son los ooquistes que se eliminan a través de las heces, las mismas que al ser arrastradas por el agua o al estar en contacto con los animales, constituye un factor determinante para la diseminación del endoparásito. El análisis se realizó en el laboratorio clínico de la Facultad de Ciencias Agropecuarias y se utilizó la tinción Ziehl-Neelsen modificada para la identificación de los ooquistes; para lo cual se emplearon 200 muestras de heces de terneros, los mismos que se clasificaron en dos grupos muestreales entre 0 a 2 meses y de 2 a 4 meses de edad, de igual manera el tipo de manejo de potreros, es decir con y sin abono orgánico (gallinaza); para lo cual se asignaron 50 animales para cada variable. Los resultados obtenidos dieron un porcentaje de 32 % de casos positivos del total de las muestras, pudiendo constatar que la frecuencia relativa de presencia del parásito en los terneros de la Parroquia El Valle del cantón Cuenca, es baja, en relación con una reciente investigación realizada en el cantón San Fernando cuya prevalencia es del 91,7% (Palacios, 2014); es así que se determinó que no existe asociación causal significativa entre las variables edad y presencia de gallinaza como abono en los potrerosThis research was conducted within the parasitological field and addressed to the field of public health, considering that the problem arises when the parasite Cryptosporidium parvum infects the gastrointestinal tract of domestic and wild mammals, and can even infect humans; their polluting form are oocysts that are eliminated through feces and being washed away or being in contact with each other animals, it is critical for their pollution factor. The analysis was performed in the clinical laboratory of Faculty of Agricultural Sciences and Technology and the Ziehl Neelsen’s staining method for identification of oocysts was used, we proceeded identifying calves and 200 samples were taken with animals aged among 0 to 2 months and 2.1 to 4 months, with different type of pasture management, with and without poultry manure; a group of 50 animals was realized for each variable. The obtained results gave a percentage of 32% of positive cases of the total of the samples, being able to see that the relative frequency of the parasite by sector in the calves of Parish El Valle of the Canton Cuenca is low, in connection with a recent investigation carried out in the Canton San Fernando whose prevalence is of 91.7% (Palacios, 2014); so there is no significantly association between the variables age and presence of manure as fertilizer on pasture groundsMédico Veterinario y ZootecnistaCuenc

Sistema de reconocimiento de objetos sobre visión foveal mediante realidad virtual

Peer Reviewe

Gait analysis for challenged users based on a rollator equipped with force sensors

El análisis del paso proporciona información detallada acerca del estado de los pacientes, su progreso en los tratamientos de rehabilitación y el riesgo de caídas que tienen. Este análisis se realiza usualmente en condiciones muy específicas, haciendo uso de cintas de andar, cámaras y/o sensores vestibles. En el artículo presentado en esta conferencia, se propone un análisis del paso usando un andador inteligente, equipado con un conjunto básico de sensores. Este trabajo propone una metodología para obtener los parámetros relevantes del paso utilizando una herramienta común y de bajo coste: odometría de las ruedas de un andador y sensores de fuerza del manillar. Las principales ventajas de este enfoque es que los usuarios no son molestados con sensores adicionales en su cuerpo. Además, el seguimiento se puede realizar en cualquier lugar, incluso haciendo las actividades de la vida cotidiana y por períodos de tiempo prolongados. Hemos probado nuestro sistema con un conjunto de pacientes de rehabilitación con diferentes discapacidades. Los resultados preliminares han demostrado con éxito que los parámetros extraídos son coherentes con los efectos reportados por el equipo médico sobre su condición.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech