scholarly journals Training with Agency-Inspired Feedback from an Instrumented Glove to Improve Functional Grasp Performance

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 1173
Author(s):  
Mingxiao Liu ◽  
Samuel Wilder ◽  
Sean Sanford ◽  
Soha Saleh ◽  
Noam Y. Harel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sensory Feedback ◽  
Small Object ◽  
Intentional Binding ◽  
Audio Feedback ◽  
Instrumented Glove ◽  
Sensory Consequence ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Flex Sensors ◽  
Functional Task

Sensory feedback from wearables can be effective to learn better movement through enhanced information and engagement. Facilitating greater user cognition during movement practice is critical to accelerate gains in motor function during rehabilitation following brain or spinal cord trauma. This preliminary study presents an approach using an instrumented glove to leverage sense of agency, or perception of control, to provide training feedback for functional grasp. Seventeen able-bodied subjects underwent training and testing with a custom-built sensor glove prototype from our laboratory. The glove utilizes onboard force and flex sensors to provide inputs to an artificial neural network that predicts achievement of “secure” grasp. Onboard visual and audio feedback was provided during training with progressively shorter time delay to induce greater agency by intentional binding, or perceived compression in time between an action (grasp) and sensory consequence (feedback). After training, subjects demonstrated a significant reduction (p < 0.05) in movement pathlength and completion time for a functional task involving grasp-move-place of a small object. Future work will include a model-based algorithm to compute secure grasp, virtual reality immersion, and testing with clinical populations.

scholarly journals Impact of Earthquakes on the Transportation Infrastructure of Indonesia: A Preliminary Study

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anita Amirsardari ◽  
Massoud Sofi ◽  
Elisa Lumantarna ◽  
Iswandi Imran ◽  
Colin Duffield
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Seismic Risk ◽  
Transportation Infrastructure ◽  
Seismic Region ◽  
The Past ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Critical Components ◽  
Future Work ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Economical Losses

Indonesia is a high seismic region and one of the most vulnerable countries prone to experiencing damaging earthquakes. It is critical that lifeline infrastructure remain operational or is quickly remediated after an earthquake to minimise physical, social, and economical losses. Not much work has been carried out in understanding the effect of earthquakes on transportation infrastructure systems. This study aims to gain a better understanding of the impact of earthquakes on the transportation infrastructure in Indonesia. This is achieved by firstly reviewing the frameworks and tools for conducting seismic risk assessment of lifeline infrastructure. The critical components of the transportation system are then identified. Various forms of transportation infrastructure damage caused by earthquakes are discussed. An overview of the damaging earthquakes for the past 20 years is presented. Finally, conclusions and recommendations are provided about the future work required for conducting risk assessment of the transportation infrastructure in Indonesia

scholarly journals "Musical Exercise” for People with Visual Impairments: A Preliminary Study with the Blindfolded

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ridwan Ahmed Khan ◽  
Myounghoon Jeon ◽  
Tejin Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Adverse Effect ◽  
Completion Time ◽  
Visual Impairments ◽  
Good Health ◽  
Sound Design ◽  
Audio Feedback ◽  
Auditory Displays ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Perceived Workload ◽  
Preliminary Study

Performing independent physical exercise is critical to maintain one's good health, but it is specifically hard for people with visual impairments. To address this problem, we have developed a Musical Exercise platform for people with visual impairments so that they can perform exercise in a good form consistently. We designed six different conditions, including blindfolded or visual without audio conditions, and blindfolded or visual with two different types of audio feedback (continuous vs. discrete) conditions. Eighteen sighted participants participated in the experiment, by doing two exercises - squat and wall sit with all six conditions. The results show that Musical Exercise is a usable exercise assistance system without any adverse effect on exercise completion time or perceived workload. Also, the results show that with a specific sound design (i.e., discrete), participants in the blindfolded condition can do exercise as consistently as participants in the non-blindfolded condition. This implies that not all sounds equally work and thus, care is required to refine auditory displays. Potentials and limitations of Musical Exercise and future works are discussed with the results.

scholarly journals Design of a Novel Wearable System for Foot Clearance Estimation

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (23) ◽  
pp. 7891
Author(s):  
Shilpa Jacob ◽  
Geoff Fernie ◽  
Atena Roshan Fekr
Keyword(s):  
Motion Capture ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Wearable System ◽  
Gait Parameters ◽  
Foot Clearance ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Offset Compensation ◽  
Walking Speeds ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Healthy Females

Trip-related falls are one of the major causes of injury among seniors in Canada and can be attributable to an inadequate Minimum Toe Clearance (MTC). Currently, motion capture systems are the gold standard for measuring MTC; however, they are expensive and have a restricted operating area. In this paper, a novel wearable system is proposed that can estimate different foot clearance parameters accurately using only two Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensors located at the toe and heel of the shoe. A small-scale preliminary study was conducted to investigate the feasibility of foot clearance estimation using the proposed wearable system. We recruited ten young, healthy females to walk at three self-selected speeds (normal, slow, and fast) while wearing the system. Our data analysis showed an average correlation coefficient of 0.94, 0.94, 0.92 for the normal, slow, and fast speed, respectively, when comparing the ToF signals with motion capture. The ANOVA analysis confirmed these results further by revealing no statistically significant differences between the ToF signals and motion capture data for most of the gait parameters after applying the newly proposed foot angle and offset compensation. In addition, the proposed system can measure the MTC with an average Mean Error (ME) of −0.08 ± 3.69 mm, −0.12 ± 4.25 mm, and −0.10 ± 6.57 mm for normal, slow, and fast walking speeds, respectively. The proposed affordable wearable system has the potential to perform real-time MTC estimation and contribute to future work focused on minimizing tripping risks.

Application of Mathematical Modeling for the Secure and Intelligent Energy Infrastructure

2017 ◽  
pp. 879-885
Author(s):  
Tianxing Cai
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Modeling ◽  
National Security ◽  
Energy Infrastructure ◽  
The Road ◽  
Road Map ◽  
Map Generation ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Scientific Strategy ◽  
Future Work

The unpredictable damage caused by potential attack and natural disaster may impact the operation of energy infrastructure, which is vital to local and national security. Thus, mathematical modeling based decision making tools become a must, because they can provide the scientific strategy to enhance the security and intelligence of energy infrastructure. In this chapter, the preliminary framework of a mathematical model is introduced. It includes the definition and characterization of energy network with the capability of self-recovery and the efficacy of the road map generation to handle the uncertainty of identified damage. The new methodology is the preliminary study for the future work in this field.

scholarly journals Typifying Guinea Pig (Cavia Porcellus) Farmers in Urban and Peri-Urban Areas in Central and Southern Côte d'lvoire

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 323-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
N'Goran David Vincent Kouakou ◽  
Niko Speybroeck ◽  
Nogbou Emmanuel Assidjo ◽  
Jean-François Grongnet ◽  
Eric Thys
Keyword(s):  
Guinea Pig ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Cultural Background ◽  
Cavia Porcellus ◽  
Pig Production ◽  
Socioeconomic Profile ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Changes Over Time ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Over Time

Guinea pig production is practised by all strata of society in Côte d'Ivoire, without regard to gender, age, religion, instruction level or community. It is essentially a source of income, but socioeconomic and cultural background significantly influence the approach to guinea pig production. Adult owners use animals as a source of income. Children eat a significant part of the production themselves. Adolescents progress from consumption to marketing. This preliminary study opens the way for future work that could measure changes over time in the socioeconomic profile of guinea pig farmers and the attitude of the population towards guinea pig breeding.

Estimating the Reliability of Digital Data Acquisition in Cultural Astronomy

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Rodríguez-Antón ◽  
A. César González-García ◽  
Juan Antonio Belmonte
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Google Earth ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Digital Tools ◽  
Political Unrest ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Digital Data Acquisition ◽  
Future Work ◽  
Made In

Digital tools are increasingly used in cultural astronomy, so that it is now more important than ever to assess their precision and reliability, and to identify what uncertainties they may introduce. The present work aims to address these issues by comparing a dataset of orientations of Roman cities in the Iberian Peninsula measured in situ with measurements of the same structures obtained through different digital tools. By this, it is possible to estimate the errors that using these techniques introduce and to establish precision limits to data in future work. The results of this preliminary study are then implemented in an archaeoastronomical research project in North Africa, where some on-site measurements had been made in previous fieldwork campaigns by members of the group prior to the current political unrest that now prevents work at some sites in the region. In these instances, Google Earth Pro (2017) and HeyWhatsThat (Kosowsky 2012) have been key tools that have allowed us to complete a survey stretching from present-day Morocco to Libya, as well as to extract a preliminary outline of orientation trends in Roman Africa.

scholarly journals Lab-on-Spoon – a 3-D integrated hand-held multi-sensor system for low-cost food quality, safety, and processing monitoring in assisted-living systems

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. König ◽  
K. Thongpull
Keyword(s):  
Assisted Living ◽  
Industry 4.0 ◽  
Ambient Intelligence ◽  
Sensory Feedback ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Cyber Physical Systems ◽  
Physical Systems ◽  
Front End ◽  
Future Work ◽  
The Internet Of Things

Abstract. Distributed integrated sensory systems enjoy increasing impact leveraged by the surging advance of sensor, communication, and integration technology in, e.g., the Internet of Things, cyber-physical systems, Industry 4.0, and ambient intelligence/assisted-living applications. Smart kitchens and "white goods" in general have become an active field of R&amp;D. The goal of our research is to provide assistance for unskilled or challenged consumers by efficient sensory feedback or context on ingredient quality and cooking step results, which explicitly includes decay and contamination detection. As one front end of such a culinary-assistance system, an integrated, multi-sensor, low-cost, autonomous, smart spoon device, denoted as Lab-on-Spoon (LoS), has been conceived. The first realized instance presented here features temperature, color, and impedance spectroscopy sensing in a 3-D-printed spoon package. Acquired LoS data are subject to sensor fusion and decision making on the host system. LoS was successfully applied to liquid ingredient recognition and quality assessment, including contamination detection, in several applications, e.g., for glycerol detection in wine. In future work, improvement to sensors, electronics, and algorithms will be pursued to achieve an even more robust, dependable and self-sufficient LoS system.

Application of Mathematical Modeling for the Secure and Intelligent Energy Infrastructure

2016 ◽  
pp. 182-189
Author(s):  
Tianxing Cai
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Modeling ◽  
National Security ◽  
Energy Infrastructure ◽  
The Road ◽  
Road Map ◽  
Map Generation ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Scientific Strategy ◽  
Future Work

The unpredictable damage caused by potential attack and natural disaster may impact the operation of energy infrastructure, which is vital to local and national security. Thus, mathematical modeling based decision making tools become a must, because they can provide the scientific strategy to enhance the security and intelligence of energy infrastructure. In this chapter, the preliminary framework of a mathematical model is introduced. It includes the definition and characterization of energy network with the capability of self-recovery and the efficacy of the road map generation to handle the uncertainty of identified damage. The new methodology is the preliminary study for the future work in this field.

scholarly journals An Exploratory Study Comparing CAD Tools and Working Styles for Implementing Design Changes

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1383-1392
Author(s):  
Vrushank Shripad Phadnis ◽  
Kevin Alfonso Leonardo ◽  
David Robert Wallace ◽  
Alison Louise Olechowski
Keyword(s):  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Computer Aided Design ◽  
Value Added ◽  
Cad Model ◽  
Collaborative Environment ◽  
Design Changes ◽  
Communication History ◽  
Preliminary Study ◽  
Aided Design ◽  
Future Work

AbstractThis paper presents the findings of a preliminary study comparing implementation of design changes using various computer-aided design (CAD) working styles. Our study compares individuals’ and pairs’ completion of a series of changes to a toy car CAD model. We discuss the results in terms of productivity and value added ratio, derived from time-based quantitative data. We also discuss qualitative findings acquired through post-study surveys. Overall, our findings suggest that pairs were less efficient than individual designers due to overheads like communication, history dependency and complex couplings within the CAD model tree. However, it is also noteworthy that within each pair the lead participant's performance was at par with individual participants. Lastly, we also discuss behaviors and patterns that emerge as unique to the synchronous collaborative environment, motivating future work.

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