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Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions)

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A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2015) | Viewed by 188730

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Jesús Fontecha

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

MAmI Research Lab, Castilla-La Mancha University, 13071 Ciudad Real, Spain
Interests: ubiquitous computing; smart health; mHealth; context awareness; AAL; frailty; gait analysis; data mining; visualization; user interaction
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Paul Mccullagh

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Computer Science Research Institute, School of Computing and Mathematics, University of Ulster, Jordanstown campus, Shore Road, Newtownabbey, Co. Antrim, BT37 0QB, UK
Interests: assistive technology, artificial intelligence

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The 8th International Symposium on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & 6th International Work-Conference on Ambient Assisted Living (Belfast, Northern Ireland, 2014) received notable contributions, using sensors and focusing on m-health, smart environments, wearable and mobile systems, new interaction and visualization mechanisms, and wireless architectures.

Authors of the selected papers are invited to submit the extended versions of their original papers and contributions regarding the following topics:

- Sensors for environmental monitoring. Smart devices and green computing. Urban areas.

- Frameworks, middlewares, and platforms in AmI and assistive environments. Interoperability and standards. Mobile ad hoc and wireless sensor networks.

- Use of sensors and visualization methods in ubiquitous environments. Ambient and public displays. Information visualization.

- Implementation, deployment, and evaluation of sensor systems. Assistive sensors and social robotics.

- Design and implementation of wearable sensors and embedded technologies in AmI environments.

- Security, privacy, and reliability of sensors in AmI.

- Sensors in Ambient Assisted Living. Monitoring in daily living, activity recognition, body monitoring, and behavior aspects.

- Sensor-based interfaces for AmI environments (RFID, NFC, 2D codes, multi-modal). Tangible and natural interactions. Usability. Virtual and augmented reality.

Dr. Jesús Fontecha
Prof. Dr. Paul Mccullagh
Guest Editor

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Keywords

mHealth
ambient intelligence
sensor-based interactin
smart environments
Ambient Assisted Living
wearable sensors
sensor networks
security and privacy
monitoring
social robotics
virtual reality
visualization

Published Papers (25 papers)

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2515 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Context-Aware Model to Provide Positioning in Disaster Relief Scenarios

by Daniel Moreno, Sergio F. Ochoa and Roc Meseguer

Sensors 2015, 15(10), 25176-25207; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s151025176 - 30 Sep 2015

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 5375

The effectiveness of the work performed during disaster relief efforts is highly dependent on the coordination of activities conducted by the first responders deployed in the affected area. Such coordination, in turn, depends on an appropriate management of geo-referenced information. Therefore, enabling first [...] Read more.

The effectiveness of the work performed during disaster relief efforts is highly dependent on the coordination of activities conducted by the first responders deployed in the affected area. Such coordination, in turn, depends on an appropriate management of geo-referenced information. Therefore, enabling first responders to count on positioning capabilities during these activities is vital to increase the effectiveness of the response process. The positioning methods used in this scenario must assume a lack of infrastructure-based communication and electrical energy, which usually characterizes affected areas. Although positioning systems such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) have been shown to be useful, we cannot assume that all devices deployed in the area (or most of them) will have positioning capabilities by themselves. Typically, many first responders carry devices that are not capable of performing positioning on their own, but that require such a service. In order to help increase the positioning capability of first responders in disaster-affected areas, this paper presents a context-aware positioning model that allows mobile devices to estimate their position based on information gathered from their surroundings. The performance of the proposed model was evaluated using simulations, and the obtained results show that mobile devices without positioning capabilities were able to use the model to estimate their position. Moreover, the accuracy of the positioning model has been shown to be suitable for conducting most first response activities. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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Open AccessArticle

Developing Mixed Reality Educational Applications: The Virtual Touch Toolkit

by Juan Mateu, María José Lasala and Xavier Alamán

Sensors 2015, 15(9), 21760-21784; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150921760 - 31 Aug 2015

Cited by 28 | Viewed by 7874

In this paper, we present Virtual Touch, a toolkit that allows the development of educational activities through a mixed reality environment such that, using various tangible elements, the interconnection of a virtual world with the real world is enabled. The main goal of [...] Read more.

In this paper, we present Virtual Touch, a toolkit that allows the development of educational activities through a mixed reality environment such that, using various tangible elements, the interconnection of a virtual world with the real world is enabled. The main goal of Virtual Touch is to facilitate the installation, configuration and programming of different types of technologies, abstracting the creator of educational applications from the technical details involving the use of tangible interfaces and virtual worlds. Therefore, it is specially designed to enable teachers to themselves create educational activities for their students in a simple way, taking into account that teachers generally lack advanced knowledge in computer programming and electronics. The toolkit has been used to develop various educational applications that have been tested in two secondary education high schools in Spain. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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312 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Optimized ECC Implementation for Secure Communication between Heterogeneous IoT Devices

by Leandro Marin, Marcin Piotr Pawlowski and Antonio Jara

Sensors 2015, 15(9), 21478-21499; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150921478 - 28 Aug 2015

Cited by 40 | Viewed by 7992

The Internet of Things is integrating information systems, places, users and billions of constrained devices into one global network. This network requires secure and private means of communications. The building blocks of the Internet of Things are devices manufactured by various producers and [...] Read more.

The Internet of Things is integrating information systems, places, users and billions of constrained devices into one global network. This network requires secure and private means of communications. The building blocks of the Internet of Things are devices manufactured by various producers and are designed to fulfil different needs. There would be no common hardware platform that could be applied in every scenario. In such a heterogeneous environment, there is a strong need for the optimization of interoperable security. We present optimized elliptic curve Cryptography algorithms that address the security issues in the heterogeneous IoT networks. We have combined cryptographic algorithms for the NXP/Jennic 5148- and MSP430-based IoT devices and used them to created novel key negotiation protocol. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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Open AccessArticle

Knowledge-Based Query Construction Using the CDSS Knowledge Base for Efficient Evidence Retrieval

by Muhammad Afzal, Maqbool Hussain, Taqdir Ali, Jamil Hussain, Wajahat Ali Khan, Sungyoung Lee and Byeong Ho Kang

Sensors 2015, 15(9), 21294-21314; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150921294 - 28 Aug 2015

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 8981

Finding appropriate evidence to support clinical practices is always challenging, and the construction of a query to retrieve such evidence is a fundamental step. Typically, evidence is found using manual or semi-automatic methods, which are time-consuming and sometimes make it difficult to construct [...] Read more.

Finding appropriate evidence to support clinical practices is always challenging, and the construction of a query to retrieve such evidence is a fundamental step. Typically, evidence is found using manual or semi-automatic methods, which are time-consuming and sometimes make it difficult to construct knowledge-based complex queries. To overcome the difficulty in constructing knowledge-based complex queries, we utilized the knowledge base (KB) of the clinical decision support system (CDSS), which has the potential to provide sufficient contextual information. To automatically construct knowledge-based complex queries, we designed methods to parse rule structure in KB of CDSS in order to determine an executable path and extract the terms by parsing the control structures and logic connectives used in the logic. The automatically constructed knowledge-based complex queries were executed on the PubMed search service to evaluate the results on the reduction of retrieved citations with high relevance. The average number of citations was reduced from 56,249 citations to 330 citations with the knowledge-based query construction approach, and relevance increased from 1 term to 6 terms on average. The ability to automatically retrieve relevant evidence maximizes efficiency for clinicians in terms of time, based on feedback collected from clinicians. This approach is generally useful in evidence-based medicine, especially in ambient assisted living environments where automation is highly important. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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538 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An Intelligent System Proposal for Improving the Safety and Accessibility of Public Transit by Highway

by Carmelo R. García, Alexis Quesada-Arencibia, Teresa Cristóbal, Gabino Padrón, Ricardo Pérez and Francisco Alayón

Sensors 2015, 15(8), 20279-20304; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150820279 - 18 Aug 2015

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 5969

The development of public transit systems that are accessible and safe for everyone, including people with special needs, is an objective that is justified from the civic and economic points of view. Unfortunately, public transit services are conceived for people who do not [...] Read more.

The development of public transit systems that are accessible and safe for everyone, including people with special needs, is an objective that is justified from the civic and economic points of view. Unfortunately, public transit services are conceived for people who do not have reduced physical or cognitive abilities. In this paper, we present an intelligent public transit system by highway with the goal of facilitating access and improving the safety of public transit for persons with special needs. The system is deployed using components that are commonly available in transport infrastructure, e.g., sensors, mobile communications systems, and positioning systems. In addition, the system can operate in non-urban transport contexts, e.g., isolated rural areas, where the availability of basic infrastructure, such as electricity and communications infrastructures, is not always guaranteed. To construct the system, the principles and techniques of Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence have been employed. To illustrate the utility of the system, two cases of services rendered by the system are described: the first case involves a surveillance system to guarantee accessibility at bus stops; the second case involves a route assistant for blind people. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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879 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Comparative Study on the Suitability of Smartphones and IMU for Mobile, Unsupervised Energy Expenditure Calculi

by Angel Ruiz-Zafra, Eva Orantes-González, Manuel Noguera, Kawtar Benghazi and Jose Heredia-Jimenez

Sensors 2015, 15(8), 18270-18286; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150818270 - 27 Jul 2015

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 5533

The metabolic equivalent of task (MET) is currently the most used indicator for measuring the energy expenditure (EE) of a physical activity (PA) and has become an important measure for determining and supervising a person’s state of health. The use of new devices [...] Read more.

The metabolic equivalent of task (MET) is currently the most used indicator for measuring the energy expenditure (EE) of a physical activity (PA) and has become an important measure for determining and supervising a person’s state of health. The use of new devices which are capable of measuring inertial movements by means of built-in accelerometers enable the PA to be measured objectively on the basis of the reckoning of “counts”. These devices are also known as inertial measurement units (IMUs) and each count is an aggregated value indicating the intensity of a movement and can be used in conjunction with other parameters to determine the MET rate of a particular physical activity and thus it’s associated EE. Various types of inertial devices currently exist that enable count calculus and physical activity to be monitored. The advent of mobile devices, such as smartphones, with empowered computation capabilities and integrated inertial sensors, has enabled EE to be measure in a distributed, ubiquitous and natural way, thereby overcoming the reluctance of users and practitioners associated with in-lab studies. From the point of view of the process analysis and infrastructure needed to manage data from inertial devices, there are also various differences in count computing: extra devices are required, out-of-device processing, etc. This paper presents a study to discover whether the estimation of energy expenditure is dependent on the accelerometer of the device used in measurements and to discover the suitability of each device for performing certain physical activities. In order to achieve this objective, we have conducted several experiments with different subjects on the basis of the performance of various daily activities with different smartphones and IMUs. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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823 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Geospatial Semantic Enrichment and Query Service for Geotagged Photographs

by Andrew Ennis, Chris Nugent, Philip Morrow, Liming Chen, George Ioannidis, Alexandru Stan and Preslav Rachev

Sensors 2015, 15(7), 17470-17482; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150717470 - 20 Jul 2015

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 5526

With the increasing abundance of technologies and smart devices, equipped with a multitude of sensors for sensing the environment around them, information creation and consumption has now become effortless. This, in particular, is the case for photographs with vast amounts being created and [...] Read more.

With the increasing abundance of technologies and smart devices, equipped with a multitude of sensors for sensing the environment around them, information creation and consumption has now become effortless. This, in particular, is the case for photographs with vast amounts being created and shared every day. For example, at the time of this writing, Instagram users upload 70 million photographs a day. Nevertheless, it still remains a challenge to discover the “right” information for the appropriate purpose. This paper describes an approach to create semantic geospatial metadata for photographs, which can facilitate photograph search and discovery. To achieve this we have developed and implemented a semantic geospatial data model by which a photograph can be enrich with geospatial metadata extracted from several geospatial data sources based on the raw low-level geo-metadata from a smartphone photograph. We present the details of our method and implementation for searching and querying the semantic geospatial metadata repository to enable a user or third party system to find the information they are looking for. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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724 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Marginalised Stacked Denoising Autoencoders for Robust Representation of Real-Time Multi-View Action Recognition

by Feng Gu, Francisco Flórez-Revuelta, Dorothy Monekosso and Paolo Remagnino

Sensors 2015, 15(7), 17209-17231; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150717209 - 16 Jul 2015

Cited by 10 | Viewed by 6341

Multi-view action recognition has gained a great interest in video surveillance, human computer interaction, and multimedia retrieval, where multiple cameras of different types are deployed to provide a complementary field of views. Fusion of multiple camera views evidently leads to more robust decisions [...] Read more.

Multi-view action recognition has gained a great interest in video surveillance, human computer interaction, and multimedia retrieval, where multiple cameras of different types are deployed to provide a complementary field of views. Fusion of multiple camera views evidently leads to more robust decisions on both tracking multiple targets and analysing complex human activities, especially where there are occlusions. In this paper, we incorporate the marginalised stacked denoising autoencoders (mSDA) algorithm to further improve the bag of words (BoWs) representation in terms of robustness and usefulness for multi-view action recognition. The resulting representations are fed into three simple fusion strategies as well as a multiple kernel learning algorithm at the classification stage. Based on the internal evaluation, the codebook size of BoWs and the number of layers of mSDA may not significantly affect recognition performance. According to results on three multi-view benchmark datasets, the proposed framework improves recognition performance across all three datasets and outputs record recognition performance, beating the state-of-art algorithms in the literature. It is also capable of performing real-time action recognition at a frame rate ranging from 33 to 45, which could be further improved by using more powerful machines in future applications. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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1096 KiB

Open AccessArticle

MagicFinger: 3D Magnetic Fingerprints for Indoor Location

by Daniel Carrillo, Victoria Moreno, Benito Úbeda and Antonio F. Skarmeta

Sensors 2015, 15(7), 17168-17194; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150717168 - 15 Jul 2015

Cited by 22 | Viewed by 6703

Given the indispensable role of mobile phones in everyday life, phone-centric sensing systems are ideal candidates for ubiquitous observation purposes. This paper presents a novel approach for mobile phone-centric observation applied to indoor location. The approach involves a location fingerprinting methodology that takes [...] Read more.

Given the indispensable role of mobile phones in everyday life, phone-centric sensing systems are ideal candidates for ubiquitous observation purposes. This paper presents a novel approach for mobile phone-centric observation applied to indoor location. The approach involves a location fingerprinting methodology that takes advantage of the presence of magnetic field anomalies inside buildings. Unlike existing work on the subject, which uses the intensity of magnetic field for fingerprinting, our approach uses all three components of the measured magnetic field vectors to improve accuracy. By using adequate soft computing techniques, it is possible to adequately balance the constraints of common solutions. The resulting system does not rely on any infrastructure devices and therefore is easy to manage and deploy. The proposed system consists of two phases: the offline phase and the online phase. In the offline phase, magnetic field measurements are taken throughout the building, and 3D maps are generated. Then, during the online phase, the user’s location is estimated through the best estimator for each zone of the building. Experimental evaluations carried out in two different buildings confirm the satisfactory performance of indoor location based on magnetic field vectors. These evaluations provided an error of (11.34 m, 4.78 m) in the (x; y) components of the estimated positions in the first building where the experiments were carried out, with a standard deviation of (3.41 m, 4.68 m); and in the second building, an error of (4 m, 2.98 m) with a deviation of (2.64 m, 2.33 m). Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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4475 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Real-Time Personalized Monitoring to Estimate Occupational Heat Stress in Ambient Assisted Working

by Pablo Pancardo, Francisco D. Acosta, José Adán Hernández-Nolasco, Miguel A. Wister and Diego López-de-Ipiña

Sensors 2015, 15(7), 16956-16980; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150716956 - 13 Jul 2015

Cited by 26 | Viewed by 7243

Ambient Assisted Working (AAW) is a discipline aiming to provide comfort and safety in the workplace through customization and technology. Workers’ comfort may be compromised in many labor situations, including those depending on environmental conditions, like extremely hot weather conduces to heat stress. [...] Read more.

Ambient Assisted Working (AAW) is a discipline aiming to provide comfort and safety in the workplace through customization and technology. Workers’ comfort may be compromised in many labor situations, including those depending on environmental conditions, like extremely hot weather conduces to heat stress. Occupational heat stress (OHS) happens when a worker is in an uninterrupted physical activity and in a hot environment. OHS can produce strain on the body, which leads to discomfort and eventually to heat illness and even death. Related ISO standards contain methods to estimate OHS and to ensure the safety and health of workers, but they are subjective, impersonal, performed a posteriori and even invasive. This paper focuses on the design and development of real-time personalized monitoring for a more effective and objective estimation of OHS, taking into account the individual user profile, fusing data from environmental and unobtrusive body sensors. Formulas employed in this work were taken from different domains and joined in the method that we propose. It is based on calculations that enable continuous surveillance of physical activity performance in a comfortable and healthy manner. In this proposal, we found that OHS can be estimated by satisfying the following criteria: objective, personalized, in situ, in real time, just in time and in an unobtrusive way. This enables timely notice for workers to make decisions based on objective information to control OHS. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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10953 KiB

Open AccessArticle

An Ambulatory System for Gait Monitoring Based on Wireless Sensorized Insoles

by Iván González, Jesús Fontecha, Ramón Hervás and José Bravo

Sensors 2015, 15(7), 16589-16613; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150716589 - 09 Jul 2015

Cited by 83 | Viewed by 10916

A new gait phase detection system for continuous monitoring based on wireless sensorized insoles is presented. The system can be used in gait analysis mobile applications, and it is designed for real-time demarcation of gait phases. The system employs pressure sensors to assess [...] Read more.

A new gait phase detection system for continuous monitoring based on wireless sensorized insoles is presented. The system can be used in gait analysis mobile applications, and it is designed for real-time demarcation of gait phases. The system employs pressure sensors to assess the force exerted by each foot during walking. A fuzzy rule-based inference algorithm is implemented on a smartphone and used to detect each of the gait phases based on the sensor signals. Additionally, to provide a solution that is insensitive to perturbations caused by non-walking activities, a probabilistic classifier is employed to discriminate walking forward from other low-level activities, such as turning, walking backwards, lateral walking, etc. The combination of these two algorithms constitutes the first approach towards a continuous gait assessment system, by means of the avoidance of non-walking influences. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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697 KiB

Open AccessArticle

User Expectations for Media Sharing Practices in Open Display Networks

by Rui Jose, Jorge C. S. Cardoso and Jason Hong

Sensors 2015, 15(7), 16210-16224; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150716210 - 06 Jul 2015

Viewed by 4366

Open Display Networks have the potential to allow many content creators to publish their media to an open-ended set of screen displays. However, this raises the issue of how to match that content to the right displays. In this study, we aim to [...] Read more.

Open Display Networks have the potential to allow many content creators to publish their media to an open-ended set of screen displays. However, this raises the issue of how to match that content to the right displays. In this study, we aim to understand how the perceived utility of particular media sharing scenarios is affected by three independent variables, more specifically: (a) the locativeness of the content being shared; (b) how personal that content is and (c) the scope in which it is being shared. To assess these effects, we composed a set of 24 media sharing scenarios embedded with different treatments of our three independent variables. We then asked 100 participants to express their perception of the relevance of those scenarios. The results suggest a clear preference for scenarios where content is both local and directly related to the person that is publishing it. This is in stark contrast to the types of content that are commonly found in public displays, and confirms the opportunity that open displays networks may represent a new media for self-expression. This novel understanding may inform the design of new publication paradigms that will enable people to share media across the display networks. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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627 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Traffic Behavior Recognition Using the Pachinko Allocation Model

by Thien Huynh-The, Oresti Banos, Ba-Vui Le, Dinh-Mao Bui, Yongik Yoon and Sungyoung Lee

Sensors 2015, 15(7), 16040-16059; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150716040 - 03 Jul 2015

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 7078

CCTV-based behavior recognition systems have gained considerable attention in recent years in the transportation surveillance domain for identifying unusual patterns, such as traffic jams, accidents, dangerous driving and other abnormal behaviors. In this paper, a novel approach for traffic behavior modeling is presented [...] Read more.

CCTV-based behavior recognition systems have gained considerable attention in recent years in the transportation surveillance domain for identifying unusual patterns, such as traffic jams, accidents, dangerous driving and other abnormal behaviors. In this paper, a novel approach for traffic behavior modeling is presented for video-based road surveillance. The proposed system combines the pachinko allocation model (PAM) and support vector machine (SVM) for a hierarchical representation and identification of traffic behavior. A background subtraction technique using Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) and an object tracking mechanism based on Kalman filters are utilized to firstly construct the object trajectories. Then, the sparse features comprising the locations and directions of the moving objects are modeled by PAMinto traffic topics, namely activities and behaviors. As a key innovation, PAM captures not only the correlation among the activities, but also among the behaviors based on the arbitrary directed acyclic graph (DAG). The SVM classifier is then utilized on top to train and recognize the traffic activity and behavior. The proposed model shows more flexibility and greater expressive power than the commonly-used latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) approach, leading to a higher recognition accuracy in the behavior classification. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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Open AccessArticle

H2RM: A Hybrid Rough Set Reasoning Model for Prediction and Management of Diabetes Mellitus

by Rahman Ali, Jamil Hussain, Muhammad Hameed Siddiqi, Maqbool Hussain and Sungyoung Lee

Sensors 2015, 15(7), 15921-15951; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150715921 - 03 Jul 2015

Cited by 45 | Viewed by 8862

Diabetes is a chronic disease characterized by high blood glucose level that results either from a deficiency of insulin produced by the body, or the body’s resistance to the effects of insulin. Accurate and precise reasoning and prediction models greatly help physicians to [...] Read more.

Diabetes is a chronic disease characterized by high blood glucose level that results either from a deficiency of insulin produced by the body, or the body’s resistance to the effects of insulin. Accurate and precise reasoning and prediction models greatly help physicians to improve diagnosis, prognosis and treatment procedures of different diseases. Though numerous models have been proposed to solve issues of diagnosis and management of diabetes, they have the following drawbacks: (1) restricted one type of diabetes; (2) lack understandability and explanatory power of the techniques and decision; (3) limited either to prediction purpose or management over the structured contents; and (4) lack competence for dimensionality and vagueness of patient’s data. To overcome these issues, this paper proposes a novel hybrid rough set reasoning model (H2RM) that resolves problems of inaccurate prediction and management of type-1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) and type-2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). For verification of the proposed model, experimental data from fifty patients, acquired from a local hospital in semi-structured format, is used. First, the data is transformed into structured format and then used for mining prediction rules. Rough set theory (RST) based techniques and algorithms are used to mine the prediction rules. During the online execution phase of the model, these rules are used to predict T1DM and T2DM for new patients. Furthermore, the proposed model assists physicians to manage diabetes using knowledge extracted from online diabetes guidelines. Correlation-based trend analysis techniques are used to manage diabetic observations. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed model outperforms the existing methods with 95.9% average and balanced accuracies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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652 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Software Product Line Process to Develop Agents for the IoT

by Inmaculada Ayala, Mercedes Amor, Lidia Fuentes and José M. Troya

Sensors 2015, 15(7), 15640-15660; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150715640 - 01 Jul 2015

Cited by 36 | Viewed by 6746

One of the most important challenges of this decade is the Internet of Things (IoT), which aims to enable things to be connected anytime, anyplace, with anything and anyone, ideally using any path/network and any service. IoT systems are usually composed of heterogeneous [...] Read more.

One of the most important challenges of this decade is the Internet of Things (IoT), which aims to enable things to be connected anytime, anyplace, with anything and anyone, ideally using any path/network and any service. IoT systems are usually composed of heterogeneous and interconnected lightweight devices that support applications that are subject to change in their external environment and in the functioning of these devices. The management of the variability of these changes, autonomously, is a challenge in the development of these systems. Agents are a good option for developing self-managed IoT systems due to their distributed nature, context-awareness and self-adaptation. Our goal is to enhance the development of IoT applications using agents and software product lines (SPL). Specifically, we propose to use Self-StarMASMAS, multi-agent system) agents and to define an SPL process using the Common Variability Language. In this contribution, we propose an SPL process for Self-StarMAS, paying particular attention to agents embedded in sensor motes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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Open AccessArticle

Preserving Smart Objects Privacy through Anonymous and Accountable Access Control for a M2M-Enabled Internet of Things

by José L. Hernández-Ramos, Jorge Bernal Bernabe, M. Victoria Moreno and Antonio F. Skarmeta

Sensors 2015, 15(7), 15611-15639; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150715611 - 01 Jul 2015

Cited by 18 | Viewed by 6753

As we get into the Internet of Things era, security and privacy concerns remain as the main obstacles in the development of innovative and valuable services to be exploited by society. Given the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) nature of these emerging scenarios, the application of [...] Read more.

As we get into the Internet of Things era, security and privacy concerns remain as the main obstacles in the development of innovative and valuable services to be exploited by society. Given the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) nature of these emerging scenarios, the application of current privacy-friendly technologies needs to be reconsidered and adapted to be deployed in such global ecosystem. This work proposes different privacy-preserving mechanisms through the application of anonymous credential systems and certificateless public key cryptography. The resulting alternatives are intended to enable an anonymous and accountable access control approach to be deployed on large-scale scenarios, such as Smart Cities. Furthermore, the proposed mechanisms have been deployed on constrained devices, in order to assess their suitability for a secure and privacy-preserving M2M-enabled Internet of Things. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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Open AccessArticle

Creating TUIs Using RFID Sensors—A Case Study Based on the Literacy Process of Children with Down Syndrome

by Janio Jadán-Guerrero, Luis Guerrero, Gustavo López, Doris Cáliz and José Bravo

Sensors 2015, 15(7), 14845-14863; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150714845 - 24 Jun 2015

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 9022

Teaching children with intellectual disabilities is a big challenge for most parents and educators. Special education teachers use learning strategies to develop and enhance motivation for complex learning tasks. Literacy acquisition is an essential and life-long skill for a child with intellectual disabilities. [...] Read more.

Teaching children with intellectual disabilities is a big challenge for most parents and educators. Special education teachers use learning strategies to develop and enhance motivation for complex learning tasks. Literacy acquisition is an essential and life-long skill for a child with intellectual disabilities. In this context, technology can support specific strategies that will help children learn to read. This paper introduces a Tangible User Interface (TUI) system based on Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology to support literacy for children with Down syndrome. Our proposed system focuses on the integration of RFID tags in 3D printed objects and low cost toys. The paper describes the experience of using some materials covering the tags and the different problems related to the material and distance of radio wave propagation. The results of a preliminary evaluation in a special education institution showed that the system helps to improve the interaction between teachers and children. The use of a TUI seems to give a physical sensory experience to develop literacy skills in children with Down syndrome. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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Open AccessArticle

Fair Trade Metaphor as a Control Privacy Method for Pervasive Environments: Concepts and Evaluation

by Abraham Esquivel, Pablo Haya and Xavier Alamán

Sensors 2015, 15(6), 14207-14229; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150614207 - 16 Jun 2015

Viewed by 4872

This paper presents a proof of concept from which the metaphor of “fair trade” is validated as an alternative to manage the private information of users. Our privacy solution deals with user’s privacy as a tradable good for obtaining environmental services. Thus, users [...] Read more.

This paper presents a proof of concept from which the metaphor of “fair trade” is validated as an alternative to manage the private information of users. Our privacy solution deals with user’s privacy as a tradable good for obtaining environmental services. Thus, users gain access to more valuable services as they share more personal information. This strategy, combined with optimistic access control and transaction registry mechanisms, enhances users’ confidence in the system while encouraging them to share their information, with the consequent benefit for the community. The study results are promising considering the user responses regarding the usefulness, ease of use, information classification and perception of control with the mechanisms proposed by the metaphor. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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Open AccessArticle

From Ambient Sensing to IoT-based Context Computing: An Open Framework for End to End QoC Management

by Pierrick Marie, Thierry Desprats, Sophie Chabridon, Michelle Sibilla and Chantal Taconet

Sensors 2015, 15(6), 14180-14206; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150614180 - 16 Jun 2015

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 5766

Quality of Context (QoC) awareness is recognized as a key point for the success of context-aware computing. At the time where the combination of the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, and Ambient Intelligence paradigms offer together new opportunities for managing richer context data, [...] Read more.

Quality of Context (QoC) awareness is recognized as a key point for the success of context-aware computing. At the time where the combination of the Internet of Things, Cloud Computing, and Ambient Intelligence paradigms offer together new opportunities for managing richer context data, the next generation of Distributed Context Managers (DCM) is facing new challenges concerning QoC management. This paper presents our model-driven QoCIM framework. QoCIM is the acronym for Quality of Context Information Model. We show how it can help application developers to manage the whole QoC life-cycle by providing genericity, openness and uniformity. Its usages are illustrated, both at design time and at runtime, in the case of an urban pollution context- and QoC-aware scenario. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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Open AccessArticle

Simulation of Smart Home Activity Datasets

by Jonathan Synnott, Chris Nugent and Paul Jeffers

Sensors 2015, 15(6), 14162-14179; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150614162 - 16 Jun 2015

Cited by 50 | Viewed by 8194

A globally ageing population is resulting in an increased prevalence of chronic conditions which affect older adults. Such conditions require long-term care and management to maximize quality of life, placing an increasing strain on healthcare resources. Intelligent environments such as smart homes facilitate [...] Read more.

A globally ageing population is resulting in an increased prevalence of chronic conditions which affect older adults. Such conditions require long-term care and management to maximize quality of life, placing an increasing strain on healthcare resources. Intelligent environments such as smart homes facilitate long-term monitoring of activities in the home through the use of sensor technology. Access to sensor datasets is necessary for the development of novel activity monitoring and recognition approaches. Access to such datasets is limited due to issues such as sensor cost, availability and deployment time. The use of simulated environments and sensors may address these issues and facilitate the generation of comprehensive datasets. This paper provides a review of existing approaches for the generation of simulated smart home activity datasets, including model-based approaches and interactive approaches which implement virtual sensors, environments and avatars. The paper also provides recommendation for future work in intelligent environment simulation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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Open AccessArticle

mDurance: A Novel Mobile Health System to Support Trunk Endurance Assessment

by Oresti Banos, Jose Antonio Moral-Munoz, Ignacio Diaz-Reyes, Manuel Arroyo-Morales, Miguel Damas, Enrique Herrera-Viedma, Choong Seon Hong, Sungyong Lee, Hector Pomares, Ignacio Rojas and Claudia Villalonga

Sensors 2015, 15(6), 13159-13183; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150613159 - 05 Jun 2015

Cited by 36 | Viewed by 10054

Low back pain is the most prevalent musculoskeletal condition. This disorder constitutes one of the most common causes of disability worldwide, and as a result, it has a severe socioeconomic impact. Endurance tests are normally considered in low back pain rehabilitation practice to [...] Read more.

Low back pain is the most prevalent musculoskeletal condition. This disorder constitutes one of the most common causes of disability worldwide, and as a result, it has a severe socioeconomic impact. Endurance tests are normally considered in low back pain rehabilitation practice to assess the muscle status. However, traditional procedures to evaluate these tests suffer from practical limitations, which potentially lead to inaccurate diagnoses. The use of digital technologies is considered here to facilitate the task of the expert and to increase the reliability and interpretability of the endurance tests. This work presents mDurance, a novel mobile health system aimed at supporting specialists in the functional assessment of trunk endurance by using wearable and mobile devices. The system employs a wearable inertial sensor to track the patient trunk posture, while portable electromyography sensors are used to seamlessly measure the electrical activity produced by the trunk muscles. The information registered by the sensors is processed and managed by a mobile application that facilitates the expert’s normal routine, while reducing the impact of human errors and expediting the analysis of the test results. In order to show the potential of the mDurance system, a case study has been conducted. The results of this study prove the reliability of mDurance and further demonstrate that practitioners are certainly interested in the regular use of a system of this nature. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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Open AccessArticle

Visual Privacy by Context: Proposal and Evaluation of a Level-Based Visualisation Scheme

by José Ramón Padilla-López, Alexandros Andre Chaaraoui, Feng Gu and Francisco Flórez-Revuelta

Sensors 2015, 15(6), 12959-12982; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150612959 - 04 Jun 2015

Cited by 42 | Viewed by 6782

Privacy in image and video data has become an important subject since cameras are being installed in an increasing number of public and private spaces. Specifically, in assisted living, intelligent monitoring based on computer vision can allow one to provide risk detection and [...] Read more.

Privacy in image and video data has become an important subject since cameras are being installed in an increasing number of public and private spaces. Specifically, in assisted living, intelligent monitoring based on computer vision can allow one to provide risk detection and support services that increase people’s autonomy at home. In the present work, a level-based visualisation scheme is proposed to provide visual privacy when human intervention is necessary, such as at telerehabilitation and safety assessment applications. Visualisation levels are dynamically selected based on the previously modelled context. In this way, different levels of protection can be provided, maintaining the necessary intelligibility required for the applications. Furthermore, a case study of a living room, where a top-view camera is installed, is presented. Finally, the performed survey-based evaluation indicates the degree of protection provided by the different visualisation models, as well as the personal privacy preferences and valuations of the users. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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Open AccessArticle

A Novel Software Architecture for the Provision of Context-Aware Semantic Transport Information

by Asier Moreno, Asier Perallos, Diego López-de-Ipiña, Enrique Onieva, Itziar Salaberria and Antonio D. Masegosa

Sensors 2015, 15(6), 12299-12322; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150612299 - 26 May 2015

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 7435

The effectiveness of Intelligent Transportation Systems depends largely on the ability to integrate information from diverse sources and the suitability of this information for the specific user. This paper describes a new approach for the management and exchange of this information, related to [...] Read more.

The effectiveness of Intelligent Transportation Systems depends largely on the ability to integrate information from diverse sources and the suitability of this information for the specific user. This paper describes a new approach for the management and exchange of this information, related to multimodal transportation. A novel software architecture is presented, with particular emphasis on the design of the data model and the enablement of services for information retrieval, thereby obtaining a semantic model for the representation of transport information. The publication of transport data as semantic information is established through the development of a Multimodal Transport Ontology (MTO) and the design of a distributed architecture allowing dynamic integration of transport data. The advantages afforded by the proposed system due to the use of Linked Open Data and a distributed architecture are stated, comparing it with other existing solutions. The adequacy of the information generated in regard to the specific user’s context is also addressed. Finally, a working solution of a semantic trip planner using actual transport data and running on the proposed architecture is presented, as a demonstration and validation of the system. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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Open AccessArticle

Combining Users’ Activity Survey and Simulators to Evaluate Human Activity Recognition Systems

by Gorka Azkune, Aitor Almeida, Diego López-de-Ipiña and Liming Chen

Sensors 2015, 15(4), 8192-8213; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150408192 - 08 Apr 2015

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 8328

Evaluating human activity recognition systems usually implies following expensive and time-consuming methodologies, where experiments with humans are run with the consequent ethical and legal issues. We propose a novel evaluation methodology to overcome the enumerated problems, which is based on surveys for users [...] Read more.

Evaluating human activity recognition systems usually implies following expensive and time-consuming methodologies, where experiments with humans are run with the consequent ethical and legal issues. We propose a novel evaluation methodology to overcome the enumerated problems, which is based on surveys for users and a synthetic dataset generator tool. Surveys allow capturing how different users perform activities of daily living, while the synthetic dataset generator is used to create properly labelled activity datasets modelled with the information extracted from surveys. Important aspects, such as sensor noise, varying time lapses and user erratic behaviour, can also be simulated using the tool. The proposed methodology is shown to have very important advantages that allow researchers to carry out their work more efficiently. To evaluate the approach, a synthetic dataset generated following the proposed methodology is compared to a real dataset computing the similarity between sensor occurrence frequencies. It is concluded that the similarity between both datasets is more than significant. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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Review

Jump to: Research

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Open AccessReview

Evolution of RFID Applications in Construction: A Literature Review

by Enrique Valero, Antonio Adán and Carlos Cerrada

Sensors 2015, 15(7), 15988-16008; https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/s150715988 - 03 Jul 2015

Cited by 102 | Viewed by 14575

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has been widely used in the field of construction during the last two decades. Basically, RFID facilitates the control on a wide variety of processes in different stages of the lifecycle of a building, from its conception to [...] Read more.

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has been widely used in the field of construction during the last two decades. Basically, RFID facilitates the control on a wide variety of processes in different stages of the lifecycle of a building, from its conception to its inhabitance. The main objective of this paper is to present a review of RFID applications in the construction industry, pointing out the existing developments, limitations and gaps. The paper presents the establishment of the RFID technology in four main stages of the lifecycle of a facility: planning and design, construction and commission and operation and maintenance. Concerning this last stage, an RFID application aiming to facilitate the identification of pieces of furniture in scanned inhabited environments is presented. Conclusions and future advances are presented at the end of the paper. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Select Papers from UCAmI & IWAAL 2014 – The 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence & the 6th International Workshop on Ambient Assisted Living (UCAmI & IWAAL 2014: Pervasive Sensing Solutions))

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