Remote Diagnosis in Dynamic Task Environments

Author(s):  
Y. Xiao ◽  
C. F. Mackenzie

Increasingly telecommunication systems have become an integral part of many professions. However, little empirical data and guidelines exist for designing telecommunication systems to facilitate decision makers in cooperative efforts in dynamic task environments. A preliminary experiment was conducted in which the subjects (all experienced in the domain concerned) were presented with video-tapes of previously recorded real-life trauma patient resuscitation. The experiment examined the subjects' ability to understand the status of the patient and resuscitation efforts shown in the video. The experiment was to simulate remote diagnosis tasks in which experts provide consultation through video linkage. The subjects were found to have a number of difficulties in achieving a full understanding. Hypotheses about the reasons that could explain these difficulties are proposed and they include (1) background noise, viewing range restriction, and insecure viewing access to remote sites (2) visual information overload due to the multiple action threads at remote sites (3) lack of adequate dynamic mental models of remote events and activities (4) lack of context information.

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 172988142110087
Author(s):  
Qiao Huang ◽  
Jinlong Liu

The vision-based road lane detection technique plays a key role in driver assistance system. While existing lane recognition algorithms demonstrated over 90% detection rate, the validation test was usually conducted on limited scenarios. Significant gaps still exist when applied in real-life autonomous driving. The goal of this article was to identify these gaps and to suggest research directions that can bridge them. The straight lane detection algorithm based on linear Hough transform (HT) was used in this study as an example to evaluate the possible perception issues under challenging scenarios, including various road types, different weather conditions and shades, changed lighting conditions, and so on. The study found that the HT-based algorithm presented an acceptable detection rate in simple backgrounds, such as driving on a highway or conditions showing distinguishable contrast between lane boundaries and their surroundings. However, it failed to recognize road dividing lines under varied lighting conditions. The failure was attributed to the binarization process failing to extract lane features before detections. In addition, the existing HT-based algorithm would be interfered by lane-like interferences, such as guardrails, railways, bikeways, utility poles, pedestrian sidewalks, buildings and so on. Overall, all these findings support the need for further improvements of current road lane detection algorithms to be robust against interference and illumination variations. Moreover, the widely used algorithm has the potential to raise the lane boundary detection rate if an appropriate search range restriction and illumination classification process is added.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 92-106
Author(s):  
Yang Yubing ◽  

Problem statement. This article analyzes the lytic component of P. P. Bazhov’s tales of the 1940s and proves that these tales continue the tradition laid down by the tales of the 1930s, in which malachite, copper emerald, and chrysolite were the main stones reflecting the specifics of mining life. The lytic discourse of new tales, in which the sun stone, the key-stone, the patient pebble appear, makes it possible to expand the understanding of both the ideological component of the tales and the mythopoetics of the writer’s fiction as a whole. The purpose of the article is to study the lytic component of Bazhov’s military and post-war tales, in which the contours of the future happy life of the Soviet people are visible through the image of both real and miraculous stones of the new era. Methodology. The article uses the methodology of cultural-historical, ideological-figurative, and symbolic-contextual analysis. Research results and conclusions. The article sequentially examines a number of stones that, in their appearance and in their symbolic properties, can claim the status of stones of the new Soviet era in the Urals. Among these stones we see both real-life stones (heliolite, golden topaz, and rhodonite), which in their appearance and in their symbolic lytic properties can claim the status of stones of the new Soviet era in the “Tales about Lenin”, and magical stones (key stone, patient pebble, and golden mountain blossom). The latter make it possible to assess the utopian potential of the happy future of the Soviet Urals, which from the point of view of the 1940s did not seem absolutely unattainable to Bazhov.


2021 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. e513
Author(s):  
Tomasz Piotrowski ◽  
Joanna Kazmierska ◽  
Mirosława Mocydlarz-Adamcewicz ◽  
Adam Ryczkowski

Background. This paper evaluates the status of reporting information related to the usage and ethical issues of artificial intelligence (AI) procedures in clinical trial (CT) papers focussed on radiology issues as well as other (non-trial) original radiology articles (OA). Material and Methods. The evaluation was performed by three independent observers who were, respectively physicist, physician and computer scientist. The analysis was performed for two groups of publications, i.e., for CT and OA. Each group included 30 papers published from 2018 to 2020, published before guidelines proposed by Liu et al. (Nat Med. 2020; 26:1364-1374). The set of items used to catalogue and to verify the ethical status of the AI reporting was developed using the above-mentioned guidelines. Results. Most of the reviewed studies, clearly stated their use of AI methods and more importantly, almost all tried to address relevant clinical questions. Although in most of the studies, patient inclusion and exclusion criteria were presented, the widespread lack of rigorous descriptions of the study design apart from a detailed explanation of the AI approach itself is noticeable. Few of the chosen studies provided information about anonymization of data and the process of secure data sharing. Only a few studies explore the patterns of incorrect predictions by the proposed AI tools and their possible reasons. Conclusion. Results of review support idea of implementation of uniform guidelines for designing and reporting studies with use of AI tools. Such guidelines help to design robust, transparent and reproducible tools for use in real life.


2019 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 87-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Galit Buchs ◽  
Benedetta Heimler ◽  
Amir Amedi

Abstract Visual-to-auditory Sensory Substitution Devices (SSDs) are a family of non-invasive devices for visual rehabilitation aiming at conveying whole-scene visual information through the intact auditory modality. Although proven effective in lab environments, the use of SSDs has yet to be systematically tested in real-life situations. To start filling this gap, in the present work we tested the ability of expert SSD users to filter out irrelevant background noise while focusing on the relevant audio information. Specifically, nine blind expert users of the EyeMusic visual-to-auditory SSD performed a series of identification tasks via SSDs (i.e., shape, color, and conjunction of the two features). Their performance was compared in two separate conditions: silent baseline, and with irrelevant background sounds from real-life situations, using the same stimuli in a pseudo-random balanced design. Although the participants described the background noise as disturbing, no significant performance differences emerged between the two conditions (i.e., noisy; silent) for any of the tasks. In the conjunction task (shape and color) we found a non-significant trend for a disturbing effect of the background noise on performance. These findings suggest that visual-to-auditory SSDs can indeed be successfully used in noisy environments and that users can still focus on relevant auditory information while inhibiting irrelevant sounds. Our findings take a step towards the actual use of SSDs in real-life situations while potentially impacting rehabilitation of sensory deprived individuals.


Author(s):  
Yan Xiao ◽  
Colin F. Mackenzie ◽  
Richard L. Spencer

Telecommunication systems have enabled experts to offer consultation to spatially distanced locations. To understand this mode of distributed decision making, a series of experiments were conducted to contrast how experts with different experience background (nurses, surgeons, and anesthesiologists) extract information from audio-video sources. These experiments were designed to simulate remote diagnosis tasks in which experts provide consultation through video linkage. Although all were experienced with the domain and given the same stimulus materials, these three groups of experts differed in their abilities to detect critical cues and offer diagnostic suggestions. It appears that experts were bound by their own regular roles in a resuscitation team. The findings suggest that to provide consultation of dynamic, multidisciplinary team oriented activities, an assembly of teleconsultants and/or special training is needed to provide effective consultation.


Computers ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Alexander Vodyaho ◽  
Saddam Abbas ◽  
Nataly Zhukova ◽  
Michael Chervoncev

The distinctive feature of new generation information systems is not only their complexity in terms of number of elements, number of connections and hierarchy levels, but also their constantly changing structure and behavior. In this situation the problem of receiving actual information about the observed complex Cyber–Physical Systems (CPS) current status becomes a rather difficult task. This information is needed by stakeholders for solving tasks concerning keeping the system operational, improving its efficiency, ensuring security, etc. Known approaches to solving the problem of the complex distributed CPS actual status definition are not enough effective. The authors propose a model based approach to solving the task of monitoring the status of complex CPS. There are a number of known model based approaches to complex distributed CPS monitoring, but their main difference in comparison with the suggested one is that known approaches by the most part use static models which are to be build manually by experts. It takes a lot of human efforts and often results in errors. Our idea is that automata models of structure and behavior of the observed system are used and both of these models are built and kept in actual state in automatic mode on the basis of log file information. The proposed approach is based, on one hand, on the results of the authors researches in the field of automatic synthesis of multi-level automata models of observed systems and, on the other hand, on well known algorithms of process mining. In the paper typical monitoring tasks are described and generalized algorithms for solving them using the proposed system of models are presented. An example of real life systems based on the suggested approach is given. The approach can be recommended to use for building CPS of medium and high complexity, characterized by high structural dynamics and cognitive behavior.


2019 ◽  
Vol 237 (4) ◽  
pp. 977-987
Author(s):  
Ada Le ◽  
Francis Benjamin Wall ◽  
Gina Lin ◽  
Raghavan Arunthavarajah ◽  
Matthias Niemeier

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuki Harada ◽  
Junji Ohyama

Abstract The spatiotemporal characteristics of basic attention are important for understanding attending behaviours in real-life situations, and they are useful for evaluating the accessibility of visual information. However, although people are encircled by their 360-degree surroundings in real life, no study has addressed the general characteristics of attention to 360-degree surroundings. Here, we conducted an experiment using virtual reality technology to examine the spatiotemporal characteristics of attention in a highly controlled basic visual context consisting of a 360-degree surrounding. We measured response times and gaze patterns during the 360-degree search task and examined the spatial distribution of attention and its temporal variations in a 360-degree environment based on the participants’ physical position. Data were collected from both younger adults and older adults to consider age-related differences. The results showed the fundamental spatiotemporal characteristics of 360-degree attention, which can be used as basic criteria to analyse the structure of exogenous effects on attention in complex 360-degree surroundings in real-life situations. For practical purposes, we created spherical criteria maps of 360-degree attention, which are useful for estimating attending behaviours to 360-degree environmental information or for evaluating visual information design in living environments, workspaces, or other real-life contexts.


1996 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 511-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominique Lestel

The use of computers has opened access to complex phenomena for the comprehension of which no operational narrative traditions are available. Notions of “life”, “cognition” and “intelligence” constitute metaphors and procedures for description and understanding that make it possible to discuss these phenomena, however. They represent cognitive resources for scientists. Why do computer scientists “play” at being biologists, and why do they view it as essential to naturalize their artifacts? When this question is taken as the starting point, it becomes possible to outline what an anthropological study of relations to complexity might look like. For “artificial life”, the outcome is a faustian attitude, implying the creation not of life, pure and simple, but of all possible forms of life. Most importantly, this “Godly discourse” goes along with the development of a truly astonishing object — self-modifiable, adaptable and evolutionary mimetic programs. There is no place for these surprising artifacts in the narrative traditions by means of which scholars may describe and account for them. To examine the all-pervasive but constantly denied language-related dimension of experimentation in artificial life, in an attempt to reach a more intimate understanding of how a purely playful technical project may be transformed into a grandiose metaphysical program, points to two major characteristics of such discourse, which have attracted little attention so far: its insistence on staging parallel, manipulatable and acceleratable temporal sequences for the phenomena observed, as well as an obdurate, painstaking will to exclude everything human from these worlds, which must be perfectly and even hermetically sealed off, this being perceived as a precondition for real life. One direct consequence of these radical positions is that they cut off artificial life from its richest heritage, and in particular from its forefathers in the world of art. One major consequence of this research on artificial life is the reformulation of where we cross boundaries in our culture, and rethinking the status of human beings.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document