scholarly journals The AM4I Architecture and Framework for Multimodal Interaction and Its Application to Smart Environments

Sensors ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (11) ◽  
pp. 2587 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nuno Almeida ◽  
António Teixeira ◽  
Samuel Silva ◽  
Maksym Ketsmur
Keyword(s):  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Multimodal Interaction ◽  
Dynamic Environment ◽  
Interactive Systems ◽  
Smart Environments ◽  
Multidisciplinary Teams ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
Urban Architecture ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Ubiquitous Sensing

Technologies, such as smart sensors, actuators, and other kinds of devices, are often installed in our environments (e.g., our Homes) and available to integrate our daily lives. Despite their installation being motivated by the pursuit of automation and increased efficiency, making these environments usable, acceptable and enjoyable in a sustainable, energy efficient way is not only a matter of automation. Tackling these goals is a complex task demanding the combination of different perspectives including building and urban Architecture, Ubiquitous Computing and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to provide occupants with the means to shape these environments to their needs. Interaction is of paramount relevance in the creation of adequate relations of users with their environments, but it cannot be seen independently from the ubiquitous sensing and computing or the environment’s architecture. In this regard, there are several challenges to HCI, particularly in how to integrate this multidisciplinary effort. Although there are several solutions to address some of these challenges, the complexity and dynamic nature of the smart environments and the diversity of technologies involved still present many challenges, particularly for its development. In general, the development is complex, and it is hard to create a dynamic environment providing versatile and adaptive forms of interaction. To participate in the multidisciplinary effort, the development of interaction must be supported by tools capable of facilitating co-design by multidisciplinary teams. In this article, we address the development of interaction for complex smart environments and propose the AM4I architecture and framework, a novel modular approach to design and develop adaptive multiplatform multilingual multi-device multimodal interactive systems. The potential of the framework is demonstrated by proof-of-concept applications in two different smart environment contexts, non-residential buildings and smart homes.

scholarly journals Readiness Assessment of Green Building Certification Systems for Residential Buildings during Pandemics

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 460
Author(s):  
Aidana Tleuken ◽  
Galym Tokazhanov ◽  
Mert Guney ◽  
Ali Turkyilmaz ◽  
Ferhat Karaca
Keyword(s):  
Residential Buildings ◽  
Health And Safety ◽  
Green Building ◽  
Round Table ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Wastewater Management ◽  
Residential Housing ◽  
Readiness Assessment ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Distributed Attention

One of the consequences of COVID-19 pandemic is the momentum it has created for global changes affecting various aspects of daily lives. Among these, green building certification systems (GBCSs) should not be left behind as significant potential modifications may be required to ensure their versatility for residential buildings due to the new pandemic reality. The present study aims to evaluate the readiness of chosen GBCSs for a proper assessment of existing residential housing sustainability in a post-pandemic world. Based on a literature review of the state-of-the-art data sources and round table discussions, the present study proposes a particular set of sustainability indicators covering special sustainability requirements under pandemic conditions. Then, those indicators are used to evaluate the readiness of selected GBCSs (BREEAM, LEED, WELL, CASBEE) to meet new pandemic-resilient requirements based on their responses to the indicators. The assessment shows that none of the reviewed GBCSs are fully ready to cover all the proposed indicators. GBCSs have differing focuses on particular sustainability pillars, which also affected their responses to pandemic-resilient categories. For instance, WELL rating system successfully responded to the health and safety category, whereas LEED showed better preparedness in terms of environmental efficiency. BREEAM and CASBEE systems have a more evenly distributed attention to all three pandemic-resilient categories (Health & Safety, Environmental Resources Consumption, and Comfort) with an accent on the Comfort category. On a specific note, all GBCSs are insufficiently prepared for waste and wastewater management. In the future, GBCSs should be modified to better adapt to pandemic conditions, for which the current work may provide a basis. As an alternative, brand new standards can be created to face newly arising and evolving post-pandemic requirements.

Editorial - Special Issue on VR and HCI Labs

2011 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Fátima L.S. Nunes ◽  
Carla Dal Sasso Freitas
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Multimodal Interaction ◽  
Interactive Systems ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Prospective Students ◽  
3D Interaction ◽  
Single Issue ◽  
Whole Process ◽  
Editorial Special Issue ◽  
First Time

This special issue of the SBC Journal on 3D Interactive Systems is dedicated to the dissemination of the activities of several groups working on virtual reality, 3D graphics, 3D interaction, multimodal interaction and related themes in Brazil and other countries. Through this initiative the SBC Journal on 3D Interactive Systems is innovating: it is the first time that a Brazilian journal publishes, in a single issue, information regarding different laboratories for prospective students and potential collaborators.The papers selected for this issue introduce Virtual Reality, Graphics and Human Computer Interaction laboratories, their mission and goals, as well as interesting results from their recent projects. This will benefit the scientific community as a whole. It is a special opportunity for the different research groups to introduce themselves, describe their interests and areas of activity, as well as their research directions, thus enabling contacts and potential cooperation.We received 30 manuscripts and, after a peer review phase, we selected 26 technical communications. Most of the VR and CG research laboratories in Brazil are represented; some are more dedicated to virtual reality and graphics applications, others also work with image processing for improving interaction. We also received interesting contributions from laboratories in other countries like Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland and United Kingdom, as well as from a trans-national group involving Belgium, France, Italy, Germany, Georgia, Hungary, Netherlands, Poland, Spain and United Kingdom.In a general way, readers will find information about research on interaction devices, gesture recognition-based interaction, collaborative interaction, and innovative ways of interaction with tablets and walls. Also several 3D interactive visualization and rendering techniques are well explored by VR and CG researchers. Applications related to health care, chemistry, arts, among others, are some of the topics that the labs are pursuing in their projects. All the groups are interested in receiving students and establishing collaboration for new projects. Thus, we hope the content of the papers here presented can help researchers in finding partners and, in this way, improving their contribution to the fields of VR, CG and HCI.We would like to express our thanks to the editor-in-chief, Luciana Nedel, for inviting us to be guest editors, but mainly for shaping the idea of this special issue. We also thank the reviewers for their help with insightful revisions, and the authors for their interesting contributions as well as for the willingness in the whole process of preparing this issue.

Ubiquitous User Interfaces

2010 ◽  
pp. 24-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Blumendorf ◽  
Grzegorz Lehmann ◽  
Dirk Roscher ◽  
Sahin Albayrak
Keyword(s):  
User Interface ◽  
User Interfaces ◽  
Multimodal Interaction ◽  
Interactive Systems ◽  
Interface Models ◽  
Multiple Devices ◽  
Smart Home Environment ◽  
Multimodal User Interfaces ◽  
Models At Runtime ◽  
User Device

The widespread use of computing technology raises the need for interactive systems that adapt to user, device and environment. Multimodal user interfaces provide the means to support the user in various situations and to adapt the interaction to the user’s needs. In this chapter we present a system utilizing design-time user interface models at runtime to provide flexible multimodal user interfaces. The server-based system allows the combination and integration of multiple devices to support multimodal interaction and the adaptation of the user interface to the used devices, the user and the environment. The utilization of the user interface models at runtime allows exploiting the design information for advanced adaptation possibilities. An implementation of the system has been successfully deployed in a smart home environment throughout the Service Centric Home project (www.sercho.de).

scholarly journals Privacy-Enhanced MQTT Protocol for Massive IoT

Electronics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 70
Author(s):  
Axelle Hue ◽  
Gaurav Sharma ◽  
Jean-Michel Dricot
Keyword(s):  
High Speed ◽  
Communication Protocol ◽  
Embedded Sensors ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
Client Participation ◽  
The Road ◽  
Ubiquitous Sensing ◽  
Iot Devices ◽  
The Internet Of Things ◽  
Constrained Devices

The growing expectations for ubiquitous sensing have led to the integration of countless embedded sensors, actuators, and RFIDs in our surroundings. Combined with rapid developments in high-speed wireless networks, these resource-constrained devices are paving the road for the Internet-of-Things paradigm, a computing model aiming to bring together millions of heterogeneous and pervasive elements. However, it is commonly accepted that the Privacy consideration remains one of its main challenges, a notion that does not only encompasses malicious individuals but can also be extended to honest-but-curious third-parties. In this paper, we study the design of a privacy-enhanced communication protocol for lightweight IoT devices. Applying the proposed approach to MQTT, a highly popular lightweight publish/subscribe communication protocol prevents no valuable information from being extracted from the messages flowing through the broker. In addition, it also prevents partners re-identification. Starting from a privacy-ideal, but unpractical, exact transposition of the Oblivious Transfer (OT) technology to MQTT, this paper follows an iterative process where each previous model’s drawbacks are appropriately mitigated all the while trying to preserve acceptable privacy levels. Our work provides resistance to statistical analysis attacks and dynamically supports new client participation. Additionally the whole proposal is based on the existence of a non-communicating 3rd party during pre-development. This particular contribution reaches a proof-of-concept stage through implementation, and achieves its goals thanks to OT’s indistinguishability property as well as hash-based topic obfuscations.

Introduction to this special section: Smart city geophysics

2020 ◽  
Vol 39 (9) ◽  
pp. 630-630
Keyword(s):  
Data Collection ◽  
Special Section ◽  
Dynamic Environment ◽  
Urban Environments ◽  
Vehicular Traffic ◽  
Additional Energy ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Sensing Applications ◽  
Pedestrian Traffic ◽  
Distributed Acoustic Sensing

Urban environments provide many challenges to conventional geophysical sensing. These can include the density of structures on the surface, subterranean infrastructure, electrical noise, pedestrian traffic, vehicular traffic, air traffic, and waterborne traffic in some cases. Surface access for data collection also can be an issue as more of the area is covered in concrete or asphalt or is impacted by traffic. Although challenges exist, there are also new opportunities as technology advances and as more parts of our daily lives become digitally intertwined. The papers in this special section highlight different geophysical sensing applications, ranging from infrasound to distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), that take advantage of the additional energy sources in more densely populated areas, optimize data collection around times of peak noise, and adapt to the dynamic environment that urban settings present.

Functional Redesign of the Hospital Trolley-Bed Tray Table

2016 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 20-26 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shanqing Yin ◽  
Johnathan Jun Howe Siew ◽  
Siew Bee Iris Ng ◽  
Andi Sudjana Putra ◽  
Arron Ang
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Department ◽  
Design Thinking ◽  
Dynamic Environment ◽  
Clinical Use ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Accident And Emergency ◽  
Additional Equipment ◽  
Combined Use ◽  
Accident And Emergency Department

Patients arriving in the Accident and Emergency Department tend to be moved about throughout the care journey. Although each trolley bed had a tray table attached at the end of the bed for clinical use, its space was limited and additional equipment might be left on the bedside cabinets. Hence these items were easily left behind when patients shifted to another care area. The tray table attachments on the trolley beds became the focus of a redesign effort to improve storage capability in this mobile, dynamic environment. Through the combined use of human factors and design thinking methods, a successful proof of concept was realized.

scholarly journals Increased heart rate functions as a signal of acute distress in non-communicating persons with intellectual disability

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Emilie Kildal ◽  
Kristine Stadskleiv ◽  
Elin S. Boysen ◽  
Tone Øderud ◽  
Inger-Lise Dahl ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heart Rate ◽  
Intellectual Disability ◽  
Acute Pain ◽  
Proof Of Concept ◽  
Daily Lives ◽  
Major Health ◽  
Passive Stretching ◽  
Acute Distress ◽  
Rate Functions ◽  
Major Health Issue

AbstractIntellectual disability (ID) affects approximately 1% of the population. Some patients with severe or profound ID are essentially non-communicating and therefore risk experiencing pain and distress without being able to notify their caregivers, which is a major health issue. This real-world proof of concept study aimed to see if heart rate (HR) monitoring could reveal whether non-communicating persons with ID experience acute pain or distress in their daily lives. We monitored HR in 14 non-communicating participants with ID in their daily environment to see if specific situations were associated with increased HR. We defined increased HR as being > 1 standard deviation above the daily mean and lasting > 5 s. In 11 out of 14 participants, increased HR indicated pain or distress in situations that were not previously suspected to be stressful, e.g. passive stretching of spastic limbs or being transported in patient lifts. Increased HR suggesting joy was detected in three participants (during car rides, movies). In some situations that were previously suspected to be stressful, absence of HR increase suggested absence of pain or distress. We conclude that HR monitoring may identify acute pain and distress in non-communicating persons with ID, allowing for improved health care for this patient group.

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