scholarly journals Novel approach for electromyography-controlled prostheses based on facial action

2020 ◽  
Vol 58 (11) ◽  
pp. 2685-2698
Author(s):  
Xiaodong Zhang ◽  
Rui Li ◽  
Hanzhe Li ◽  
Zhufeng Lu ◽  
Yong Hu ◽  
...  

Abstract Individuals with severe tetraplegia frequently require to control their complex assistive devices using body movement with the remaining activity above the neck. Electromyography (EMG) signals from the contractions of facial muscles enable people to produce multiple command signals by conveying information about attempted movements. In this study, a novel EMG-controlled system based on facial actions was developed. The mechanism of different facial actions was processed using an EMG control model. Four asymmetric and symmetry actions were defined to control a two-degree-of-freedom (2-DOF) prosthesis. Both indoor and outdoor experiments were conducted to validate the feasibility of EMG-controlled prostheses based on facial action. The experimental results indicated that the new paradigm presented in this paper yields high performance and efficient control for prosthesis applications.

Author(s):  
Mohammed R. Elkobaisi ◽  
Fadi Al Machot

AbstractThe use of IoT-based Emotion Recognition (ER) systems is in increasing demand in many domains such as active and assisted living (AAL), health care and industry. Combining the emotion and the context in a unified system could enhance the human support scope, but it is currently a challenging task due to the lack of a common interface that is capable to provide such a combination. In this sense, we aim at providing a novel approach based on a modeling language that can be used even by care-givers or non-experts to model human emotion w.r.t. context for human support services. The proposed modeling approach is based on Domain-Specific Modeling Language (DSML) which helps to integrate different IoT data sources in AAL environment. Consequently, it provides a conceptual support level related to the current emotional states of the observed subject. For the evaluation, we show the evaluation of the well-validated System Usability Score (SUS) to prove that the proposed modeling language achieves high performance in terms of usability and learn-ability metrics. Furthermore, we evaluate the performance at runtime of the model instantiation by measuring the execution time using well-known IoT services.


Author(s):  
Denys Rozumnyi ◽  
Jan Kotera ◽  
Filip Šroubek ◽  
Jiří Matas

AbstractObjects moving at high speed along complex trajectories often appear in videos, especially videos of sports. Such objects travel a considerable distance during exposure time of a single frame, and therefore, their position in the frame is not well defined. They appear as semi-transparent streaks due to the motion blur and cannot be reliably tracked by general trackers. We propose a novel approach called Tracking by Deblatting based on the observation that motion blur is directly related to the intra-frame trajectory of an object. Blur is estimated by solving two intertwined inverse problems, blind deblurring and image matting, which we call deblatting. By postprocessing, non-causal Tracking by Deblatting estimates continuous, complete, and accurate object trajectories for the whole sequence. Tracked objects are precisely localized with higher temporal resolution than by conventional trackers. Energy minimization by dynamic programming is used to detect abrupt changes of motion, called bounces. High-order polynomials are then fitted to smooth trajectory segments between bounces. The output is a continuous trajectory function that assigns location for every real-valued time stamp from zero to the number of frames. The proposed algorithm was evaluated on a newly created dataset of videos from a high-speed camera using a novel Trajectory-IoU metric that generalizes the traditional Intersection over Union and measures the accuracy of the intra-frame trajectory. The proposed method outperforms the baselines both in recall and trajectory accuracy. Additionally, we show that from the trajectory function precise physical calculations are possible, such as radius, gravity, and sub-frame object velocity. Velocity estimation is compared to the high-speed camera measurements and radars. Results show high performance of the proposed method in terms of Trajectory-IoU, recall, and velocity estimation.


1996 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 1178-1180 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Dorgeuille ◽  
B. Mersali ◽  
M. Feuillade ◽  
S. Sainson ◽  
S. Slempkes ◽  
...  

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Feiqiang Guo ◽  
Yinbo Zhan ◽  
Xiaopeng Jia ◽  
Huiming Zhou ◽  
Shuang Liang ◽  
...  

Using Sargassum as the precursor, a novel approach was developed to synthesize three-dimensional porous carbons as high-performance electrode materials for supercapacitors via KOH activation and subsequent nitrogen-doping employing melamine as...


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiane Adler ◽  
Igor Krivtsov ◽  
Dariusz Mitoraj ◽  
Lucía dos Santos-Gómez ◽  
Santiago García-Granda ◽  
...  

In spite of the enormous promise that polymeric carbon nitride (PCN) materials hold for photoelectrochemical (PEC) applications, the fabrication of high-quality PCN photoelectrodes has been a largely elusive goal to date. Here we tackle this challenge by devising, for the first time, a sol–gel approach that enables facile preparation of photoanodes based on poly(heptazine imide) (PHI), a polymer belonging to the PCN family. The sol–gel process capitalizes on the use of a water-soluble PHI precursor composed of nanosized (~10 nm) particles that allows formation of a non-covalent hydrogel. The hydrogel can be deposited on a conductive substrate resulting in formation of mechanically stable porous polymeric thin layers (~400 nm), in contrast to the commonly obtained loosely attached thick particulate coatings. The resulting photoanodes exhibit unprecedented PEC performance in methanol reforming in neutral pH electrolytes with photocurrents of up to 177±27 mA cm<sup>-2</sup> (1 sun illumination) and 320±40 mA cm<sup>-2</sup> (2 sun illumination) at 1.23 V vs. RHE, maintaining such high photocurrents even down to ~0 V vs. RHE. These parameters permit effective operation even without any external electric bias, as demonstrated by bias-free photoreforming of methanol and glycerol, and highly selective (~100%) photooxidation of 4-methoxybenzyl alcohol (4-MBA). The robust binder-free films derived from sol–gel processing of water-soluble PCN thus represent a new paradigm for high-performance ‘soft-matter’ photoelectrocatalytic systems, and pave the way for further applications in which high-quality PCN films are required.


Author(s):  
Maiyuren Srikumar ◽  
Charles Daniel Hill ◽  
Lloyd Hollenberg

Abstract Quantum machine learning (QML) is a rapidly growing area of research at the intersection of classical machine learning and quantum information theory. One area of considerable interest is the use of QML to learn information contained within quantum states themselves. In this work, we propose a novel approach in which the extraction of information from quantum states is undertaken in a classical representational-space, obtained through the training of a hybrid quantum autoencoder (HQA). Hence, given a set of pure states, this variational QML algorithm learns to identify – and classically represent – their essential distinguishing characteristics, subsequently giving rise to a new paradigm for clustering and semi-supervised classification. The analysis and employment of the HQA model are presented in the context of amplitude encoded states – which in principle can be extended to arbitrary states for the analysis of structure in non-trivial quantum data sets.


2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 483-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernd Tessendorf ◽  
Matjaz Debevc ◽  
Peter Derleth ◽  
Manuela Feilner ◽  
Franz Gravenhorst ◽  
...  

Hearing instruments (HIs) have become context-aware devices that analyze the acoustic environment in order to automatically adapt sound processing to the user?s current hearing wish. However, in the same acoustic environment an HI user can have different hearing wishes requiring different behaviors from the hearing instrument. In these cases, the audio signal alone contains too little contextual information to determine the user?s hearing wish. Additional modalities to sound can provide the missing information to improve the adaption. In this work, we review additional modalities to sound in HIs and present a prototype of a newly developed wireless multimodal hearing system. The platform takes into account additional sensor modalities such as the user?s body movement and location. We characterize the system regarding runtime, latency and reliability of the wireless connection, and point out possibilities arising from the novel approach.


Author(s):  
Urvish Trivedi ◽  
Jonielle McDonnough ◽  
Muhaimen Shamsi ◽  
Andrez Izurieta Ochoa ◽  
Alec Braynen ◽  
...  

Detecting humans and objects during walking has been a very difficult problem for people with visual impairment. To safely avoid collision with any object or human and to navigate from one location to another, it is significant to know how far and what kind of obstacle the user is facing. In recent years, many researches have shown that providing different vibration stimulation can be very useful to convey important information to the user. In this paper, we present our stereovision system with high definition camera to detect and identify humans and obstacles in real time and compare it with a modified version of existing wearable haptic belt that uses high-performance Ultrasonic sensors. The aim of this paper is to present the practicability of stereovision system over cane and assistive technology such as vibrotactile belt. The study is based on two assistive technologies. The first one consists of the vibrotactile belt connected to ultrasonic sensors and an accelerometer which returns user movement & speed information to the microcontroller. The microcontroller initiates expressive vibrotactile stimulation based on sensor data. Data gathered from this technology will be used as the baseline data for comparison with our stereovision system. Second, we present a novel approach to detect the type of obstacle using object recognition algorithm and the best approach to avoid it using the stereovision feedback. Data gathered from this technology with be comparted against the baseline data from the vibrotactile belt. In addition, we present the results of the comparative study which shows that stereovision system has plethora of advantages over vibrotactile belt.


2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (10) ◽  
pp. 2187-2224 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miguel Angel Ortiz-Barrios ◽  
Zulmeira Herrera-Fontalvo ◽  
Javier Rúa-Muñoz ◽  
Saimon Ojeda-Gutiérrez ◽  
Fabio De Felice ◽  
...  

PurposeThe risk of adverse events in a hospital evaluation is an important process in healthcare management. It involves several technical, social, and economical aspects. The purpose of this paper is to propose an integrated approach to evaluate the risk of adverse events in the hospital sector.Design/methodology/approachThis paper aims to provide a decision-making framework to evaluate hospital service. Three well-known methods are applied. More specifically are proposed the following methods: analytic hierarchy process (AHP), a structured technique for organizing and analyzing complex decisions, based on mathematics and psychology developed by Thomas L. Saaty in the 1970s; decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) to construct interrelations between criteria/factors and VIKOR method, a commonly used multiple-criteria decision analysis technique for determining a compromise solution and improving the quality of decision making.FindingsThe example provided has demonstrated that the proposed approach is an effective and useful tool to assess the risk of adverse events in the hospital sector. The results could help the hospital identify its high performance level and take appropriate measures in advance to prevent adverse events. The authors can conclude that the promising results obtained in applying the AHP–DEMATEL–VIKOR method suggest that the hybrid method can be used to create decision aids that it simplifies the shared decision-making process.Originality/valueThis paper presents a novel approach based on the integration of AHP, DEMATEL and VIKOR methods. The final aim is to propose a robust methodology to overcome disadvantages associated with each method.


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