Development and assessment of a low-cost embedded system for evaluation of animal thermal comfort

Technologically advanced animal production requires more controlled environments, aiming to maximize animal performance and, consequently, the profitability of the activity. To do that, it is necessary to instrument, evaluate and diagnose the various rearing environments. Hence, Precision Animal Production is inserted in this context and aims to effectively meet the general needs of the animal, so that it reach its full productive potential, correcting the divergences between the environment and its well-being to guarantee its comfort. Since Brazil is a country with tropical climate, which is a major obstacle, the proposal of this project is to develop a prototype for embedded system of thermal comfort analysis at low cost. Using sensors and the microcontroller Arduino to manage data, this work fulfilled its objective, with a prototype device (WGV-1c) capable of measuring dry bulb temperature, wet bulb temperature, black globe temperature, relative humidity, BGHI and THI with production cost below that proposed by the market.

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Monitoring and evaluation of thermal comfort in urban areas: application to Valencia city

Proceedings 5th CARPE Conference: Horizon Europe and beyond ◽

10.4995/carpe2019.2019.10198 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

David Alfonso-Solar ◽

Paula Bastida-Molina ◽

Lina Montuori ◽

Carlos Vargas-Salgado

Keyword(s):

Thermal Comfort ◽

Urban Areas ◽

Low Cost ◽

Monitoring And Evaluation ◽

Temperature Data ◽

Ambient Conditions ◽

Physiological Equivalent Temperature ◽

Globe Temperature ◽

Rayman Model ◽

Black Globe Temperature

In this paper, it is presented preliminary results of a methodology for thermal comfort monitoring and evaluation in urban areas based on local metering of ambient conditions and Rayman model application. In the framework of GROWGREEN European project it was installed six monitoring stations for data acquisition of air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, solar radiation and black globe temperature. Data of first 5 months of monitoring and modelling of one location with Rayman model to calculate PET (physiological equivalent temperature) is presented. Based on PET it was calculated the percentage of hours with thermal comfort per month, and it was made a comparison between PET and black globe temperature (GT) in order to evaluate the suitability of GT as a single, low cost and robust indicator of thermal comfort in urban areas.

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CONFORTO TÉRMICO E DESEMPENHO DE POEDEIRAS NA FASE INICIAL

ENERGIA NA AGRICULTURA ◽

10.17224/energagric.2020v35n3p388-394 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 35 (3) ◽

pp. 388-394

Author(s):

Fabiana Terezinha Leal de Morais ◽

José Pinheiro Lopes Neto ◽

Adriana Maria dos Santos ◽

Patrício Gomes Leite ◽

Raissa Gonçalves Cavalcanti

Keyword(s):

Weight Gain ◽

Thermal Comfort ◽

Initial Phase ◽

Thermal Conditions ◽

The Third ◽

Humidity Index ◽

Globe Temperature ◽

Black Globe Temperature ◽

Poultry Farming

CONFORTO TÉRMICO E DESEMPENHO DE POEDEIRAS NA FASE INICIAL FABIANA TEREZINHA LEAL DE MORAIS1, JOSÉ PINHEIRO LOPES NETO2, ADRIANA MARIA DOS SANTOS3, PATRÍCIO GOMES LEITE4, RAISSA GONÇALVES CAVALCANTI5 1Doutoranda em Engenharia Agrícola: Lacra, UFCG, Avenida Assis Chateaubriand, 101, Liberdade,58414-060, Campina Grande, Paraíba, Brasil. [email protected]. 2 Doutor em Engenharia Agrícola: Lacra, UFCG, R. Aprígio Veloso, 882 - Universitário, 58428-830, Campina Grande, Paraíba, [email protected]. 3 Mestra em Engenharia Agrícola: Lacra, UFCG, R. Alencar Pires de almeida, 07 – Centro, 58748-000, Água Branca, Paraíba, [email protected]. 4 Doutor em Engenharia Agrícola: Lacra, UFCG, R. Aprígio Veloso, 882 - Universitário, 58428-830, Campina Grande, Paraíba, [email protected] 5 Mestra em Engenharia Agrícola: Lacra, UFCG, R. Aprígio Veloso, 882 - Universitário, 58428-830, Campina Grande, Paraíba, [email protected]. RESUMO: Tendo em vista a importância do conforto térmico na avicultura de postura no Brasil, o objetivo geral destapesquisa foi avaliar o conforto térmico no galpão (pinteiro), localizado em uma granja comercial no município de Cuité (PB). A avaliação foi realizada com base nos dados de Índice da Temperatura do Globo Negro e Umidade (ITGU), avaliando o desempenho das pintainhas relacionado ao ganho de peso e as coletas de dados foram realizadas diariamente.Foi utilizado um galpão destinado para a fase de cria para aves da linhagem Lohmann LSL no período da terceira semana para desenvolvimento das aves, avaliando os valores de ITGU e comparando àqueles indicados pela literatura. Como resultados, observamos que foi possível manter as faixas de conforto térmicas bem próximas ao recomendado, e o ganho de peso mantiveram-se abaixo do indicado pelo manual da linhagem, os animais submetidos a condições térmicas adversas apresentaram menor ganho de peso. Palavras-chave: ambiência, conforto térmico, ganho de peso. THERMAL COMFORT AND POISER PERFORMANCE IN THE INITIAL PHASE (CRIA) ABSTRACT: Considering the importance of thermal comfort in poultry farming in Brazil. The aim of this research was to evaluate the thermal comfort in the shed (pestle), located in a commercial farm in the municipality of Cuité - PB. The evaluation was performed based on the data of air temperature (ºC), relative humidity of the air (%), the black globe temperature for determination of the Black Globe Temperature and Humidity Index (ITGU). Weight gain on chicks and data collection were performed daily. The shed for the breeding phase of the Lohmann LSL line was used in the third week for bird development, evaluating the ITGU values and comparing to those indicated in the literature, we observed that it was possible to keep the thermal comfort bands very close to the recommended one, and the weight gain remained distant to that indicated by the lineage manual, the animals submitted to adverse thermal conditions showed less weight gain. Keywords: ambience, thermal comfort, weight gain.

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An Integrated Framework for Users’ Well-Being

Proceedings ◽

10.3390/ecsa-4-04908 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 2 (3) ◽

pp. 114 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Francesco Salamone ◽

Lorenzo Belussi ◽

Ludovico Danza ◽

Italo Meroni

Keyword(s):

Thermal Comfort ◽

Low Cost ◽

Personal Data ◽

Well Being ◽

Field Investigation ◽

Indoor Environmental Quality ◽

Technical Standards ◽

Cultural Aspects ◽

Comfort Perception ◽

Holistic Concept

The hygro-thermal comfort (ICQ) is defined as the psychophysical state in which the subject expresses a condition of well-being with respect to environmental variables, a condition known as thermal neutrality. Furthermore, the ICQ represents one pillar of the holistic concept of the Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ). The methods for the assessment of ICQ and recognized at international level are mainly two. The former, based on a steady-state approach, described by the EN ISO 7730:2005 and applied to Fully Mechanically Controlled buildings (FMC) equipped with an active conditioning system. The latter, based on an adaptive approach, as defined trough in field activities and described by the technical standard ASHRAE 55 and EN 15,251, instead, considers the users as active subjects that interact with surrounding environment and are influenced in their comfort perception by external conditions. In this case, the thermal comfort concept is not just defined depending on physical, but also psychological, social, economic and cultural aspects. The technical standards provides that this method could be applied in middle seasons when the control of comfort is handled by passive technological methods, i.e., in the so called Natural Ventilated or Free Running buildings (FR). In this approach, methodologies providing the direct involvement of the end user are consolidating, through the collection of physiological, psychological and behavioral personal data as to obtain the better assessment of the comfort conditions. Placing in this field, the article describes the results of a field investigation in an office aimed at defining a framework for the assessment of the thermal comfort based on the two approaches through the use of low cost technology solutions, parametric and freeware models.

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Evaluation of Well-Being and Thermal Comfort of the LAD-MA Construction System for Low-Cost Homes

10.5772/intechopen.98699 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Rodolfo Jiménez Cavieres ◽

Javier Carrasco Eade ◽

Camilo Valdebenito Monsalve

Keyword(s):

Thermal Comfort ◽

Technical Assistance ◽

Low Cost ◽

Well Being ◽

International Standards ◽

Metropolitan Region ◽

Sustainable Housing ◽

Set Up ◽

And Behavior ◽

Construction System

This work is part of a research into the state of conservation and behavior of a group of self-built social housing. The construction, which dates from 1990, was carried out with an original low-cost construction system that uses clay and wood bricks called LAD-MA. This was implemented by the NGO Urban Technical Assistance Center “Taller Norte”, in the Peñalolén commune, Santiago de Chile, Metropolitan Region. The study focuses on the evaluation of well-being and thermal comfort in these homes, which is determined through environmental monitoring by meteorological stations installed for six months in 4 homes. It is established that the houses do not comply with the parameters set up by the international standards ISO 7730 and ASHRAE 55. For this, constructive solutions are proposed to thermally improve the current houses, and update the LAD-MA construction system to comply with the thermal Insulation standards stipulated for the Sustainable Housing Certification of the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism.

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CONFORTO TÉRMICO E DESEMPENHO DE LEITÕES CRIADOS EM GAIOLAS ENRIQUECIDAS COM PISO DE RESÍDUOS DE EVA (ETILENO-ACETATO DE VINILA)

ENERGIA NA AGRICULTURA ◽

10.17224/energagric.2019v34n2p230-240 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 34 (2) ◽

pp. 230-240 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Silvia Noelly Ramos de Araújo ◽

José Pinheiro Lopes Neto ◽

José Wallace Barbosa do Nascimento ◽

Fernanda Fernandes de Melo Lopes ◽

Maria Luíza de Souza Rezende

Keyword(s):

Thermal Comfort ◽

Thermal Environment ◽

Productive Performance ◽

Weaned Piglets ◽

Alternative Material ◽

Globe Temperature ◽

And Performance ◽

Comfort Indices ◽

Black Globe Temperature

CONFORTO TÉRMICO E DESEMPENHO DE LEITÕES CRIADOS EM GAIOLAS ENRIQUECIDAS COM PISO DE RESÍDUOS DE EVA (ETILENO-ACETATO DE VINILA) SILVIA NOELLY RAMOS DE ARAÚJO1, JOSÉ PINHEIRO LOPES NETO2, JOSÉ WALLACE BARBOSA DO NASCIMENTO3, FERNANDA FERNANDES DE MELO LOPES4, MARIA LUIZA DE SOUZA REZENDE5 Engenharia Agrícola, Universidade Federal de Campina Grande, Rua Aprígio Veloso, 882 – Universitário, 58429-900, Campina Grande, Paraíba, Brasil, [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]. RESUMO: Objetivou-se analisar o conforto térmico de leitões na fase de creche, mantidos em instalações com piso de placas de resíduos EVA, utilizadas para reduzir a transferência de calor dos animais para a superfície de contato, utilizando-se 24 leitões desmamados, com idade média de 23 + 2 dias, distribuídos em 8 baias, utilizando-se dois tipos de pisos: tratamento 1- Placas de EVA + piso plástico vazado e o tratamento 2- piso plástico vazado. O delineamento experimental foi inteiramente casualizado (DIC) e a comparação entre as médias através do teste de Tukey (P<0,05). A caracterização do ambiente térmico foi realizada por meio do registro da temperatura do ar, umidade relativa, temperatura de globo negro, luminosidade e velocidade do vento. Para a análise do conforto térmico proporcionado pelos pisos utilizou-se os índices de conforto térmico (temperatura de globo negro e umidade e a carga térmica de radiação), o mapeamento térmico superficial (pisos e leitões) e o desempenho produtivo dos animais. Os resultados indicaram que, as placas sobre o piso mostraram ser eficiente na redução da transferência de calor sensível entre o piso-leitão, o que tornou o aquecimento mais eficaz para os animais. Palavras-chaves: conforto térmico, creche suína, material alternativo, piso plástico. THERMAL COMFORT AND PERFORMANCE OF PIGLETS CREATED IN ENRICHED CAGES WITH EVA WASTE FLOOR (VINYL ETHYLENE ACETATE) ABSTRACT: The aim of this study was to analyze the thermal comfort of piglets in nursery phase, maintained in systems with EVA waste plates floor, used to reduce the animal heat transfer to the contact surface, using 24 weaned piglets, average age 23 + 2 days, distributed in 8 bays, using two types of floors: treatment 1: EVA plates + leaked plastic floor and treatment 2: leaked plastic floor. The experimental design was completely randomized (CRD) and the means were compared using Tukey's test (P<0.05). The characterization of the thermal environment was performed by recording the air temperature, relative humidity, black globe temperature, luminosity and wind speed. Thermal comfort indices (black globe temperature and humidity and thermal radiation load), thermal thermal mapping (floors and piglets) and the productive performance of animals were used to analyze the thermal comfort provided by the floors. The results indicated that the boards on the floor were shown to be efficient in reducing the transfer of sensible heat between the floor-piglet, which made heating more effective for the animals. Keywords: thermal comfort, nursery, alternative material, plastic floor.

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Feasibility study of technology-enabled prevention intervention for children and families (Preprint)

10.2196/preprints.14029 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Nikki Theofanopoulou ◽

Katherine Isbister ◽

Julian Edbrooke-Childs ◽

Petr Slovák

Keyword(s):

Emotion Regulation ◽

Pilot Study ◽

Low Cost ◽

Digital Camera ◽

Well Being ◽

Structured Interview ◽

Object A ◽

Intervention Delivery ◽

Parents And Children

BACKGROUND A common challenge within psychiatry and prevention science more broadly is the lack of effective, engaging, and scale-able mechanisms to deliver psycho-social interventions for children, especially beyond in-person therapeutic or school-based contexts. Although digital technology has the potential to address these issues, existing research on technology-enabled interventions for families remains limited. OBJECTIVE The aim of this pilot study was to examine the feasibility of in-situ deployments of a low-cost, bespoke prototype, which has been designed to support children’s in-the-moment emotion regulation efforts. This prototype instantiates a novel intervention model that aims to address the existing limitations by delivering the intervention through an interactive object (a ‘smart toy’) sent home with the child, without any prior training necessary for either the child or their carer. This pilot study examined (i) engagement and acceptability of the device in the homes during 1 week deployments; and (ii) qualitative indicators of emotion regulation effects, as reported by parents and children. METHODS In this qualitative study, ten families (altogether 11 children aged 6-10 years) were recruited from three under-privileged communities in the UK. The RA visited participants in their homes to give children the ‘smart toy’ and conduct a semi-structured interview with at least one parent from each family. Children were given the prototype, a discovery book, and a simple digital camera to keep at home for 7-8 days, after which we interviewed each child and their parent about their experience. Thematic analysis guided the identification and organisation of common themes and patterns across the dataset. In addition, the prototypes automatically logged every interaction with the toy throughout the week-long deployments. RESULTS Across all 10 families, parents and children reported that the ‘smart toy’ was incorporated into children’s emotion regulation practices and engaged with naturally in moments children wanted to relax or calm down. Data suggests that children interacted with the toy throughout the duration of the deployment, found the experience enjoyable, and all requested to keep the toy longer. Child emotional connection to the toy—caring for its ‘well-being’—appears to have driven this strong engagement. Parents reported satisfaction with and acceptability of the toy. CONCLUSIONS This is the first known study investigation of the use of object-enabled intervention delivery to support emotion regulation in-situ. The strong engagement and qualitative indications of effects are promising – children were able to use the prototype without any training and incorporated it into their emotion regulation practices during daily challenges. Future work is needed to extend this indicative data with efficacy studies examining the psychological efficacy of the proposed intervention. More broadly, our findings suggest the potential of a technology-enabled shift in how prevention interventions are designed and delivered: empowering children and parents through ‘child-led, situated interventions’, where participants learn through actionable support directly within family life, as opposed to didactic in-person workshops and a subsequent skills application.

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Low-Cost Embedded System Using Convolutional Neural Networks-Based Spatiotemporal Feature Map for Real-Time Human Action Recognition

Applied Sciences ◽

10.3390/app11114940 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (11) ◽

pp. 4940

Author(s):

Jinsoo Kim ◽

Jeongho Cho

Keyword(s):

Embedded System ◽

Real Time ◽

Action Recognition ◽

Processing Speed ◽

Recognition Accuracy ◽

Low Cost ◽

Human Action Recognition ◽

Human Action ◽

Video Data ◽

Feature Maps

The field of research related to video data has difficulty in extracting not only spatial but also temporal features and human action recognition (HAR) is a representative field of research that applies convolutional neural network (CNN) to video data. The performance for action recognition has improved, but owing to the complexity of the model, some still limitations to operation in real-time persist. Therefore, a lightweight CNN-based single-stream HAR model that can operate in real-time is proposed. The proposed model extracts spatial feature maps by applying CNN to the images that develop the video and uses the frame change rate of sequential images as time information. Spatial feature maps are weighted-averaged by frame change, transformed into spatiotemporal features, and input into multilayer perceptrons, which have a relatively lower complexity than other HAR models; thus, our method has high utility in a single embedded system connected to CCTV. The results of evaluating action recognition accuracy and data processing speed through challenging action recognition benchmark UCF-101 showed higher action recognition accuracy than the HAR model using long short-term memory with a small amount of video frames and confirmed the real-time operational possibility through fast data processing speed. In addition, the performance of the proposed weighted mean-based HAR model was verified by testing it in Jetson NANO to confirm the possibility of using it in low-cost GPU-based embedded systems.

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Recurrent Neural Network for Human Activity Recognition in Embedded Systems Using PPG and Accelerometer Data

Electronics ◽

10.3390/electronics10141715 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (14) ◽

pp. 1715

Author(s):

Michele Alessandrini ◽

Giorgio Biagetti ◽

Paolo Crippa ◽

Laura Falaschetti ◽

Claudio Turchetti

Keyword(s):

Neural Network ◽

Embedded System ◽

Activity Recognition ◽

Human Activity ◽

Recurrent Neural Network ◽

Low Cost ◽

Low Complexity ◽

Human Activity Recognition ◽

Motion Artifacts ◽

Accelerometer Data

Photoplethysmography (PPG) is a common and practical technique to detect human activity and other physiological parameters and is commonly implemented in wearable devices. However, the PPG signal is often severely corrupted by motion artifacts. The aim of this paper is to address the human activity recognition (HAR) task directly on the device, implementing a recurrent neural network (RNN) in a low cost, low power microcontroller, ensuring the required performance in terms of accuracy and low complexity. To reach this goal, (i) we first develop an RNN, which integrates PPG and tri-axial accelerometer data, where these data can be used to compensate motion artifacts in PPG in order to accurately detect human activity; (ii) then, we port the RNN to an embedded device, Cloud-JAM L4, based on an STM32 microcontroller, optimizing it to maintain an accuracy of over 95% while requiring modest computational power and memory resources. The experimental results show that such a system can be effectively implemented on a constrained-resource system, allowing the design of a fully autonomous wearable embedded system for human activity recognition and logging.

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I’m No Superman: fostering physician resilience through guided group discussion of Scrubs

BMC Medical Education ◽

10.1186/s12909-021-02856-9 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 21 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Arthur Holtzclaw ◽

Jack Ellis ◽

Christopher Colombo

Keyword(s):

Internal Medicine ◽

Training Programs ◽

Low Cost ◽

Group Discussion ◽

Well Being ◽

Internal Medicine Residency ◽

Resiliency Training ◽

High Satisfaction ◽

Burn Out

Abstract Background Almost half of trainees experience burnout during their career. Despite the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) recommendation that training programs enact well-being curricula, there is no proven method of addressing this difficult topic. Methods We created a curriculum addressing physician resiliency and well-being, designed for an Internal Medicine Residency Program. This curriculum utilized episodes from a medical television series, Scrubs, to facilitate a monthly, 1-h faculty guided discussion group. We collected informal feedback and abbreviated Maslach Burnout Inventories (aMBI) monthly and conducted a formal focus group after 6 months to gauge its effectiveness. Results The curriculum was successfully conducted for 12 months with each session averaging 18–20 residents. Residents reported high satisfaction, stating it was more enjoyable and helpful than traditional resiliency training. 19 of 24 residents (79 %) completed a baseline aMBI, and 17 of 20 residents (85 %) who attended the most recent session completed the 6-month follow-up, showing a non-significant 1-point improvement in all subsets of the aMBI. Conclusions This novel, low-cost, easily implemented curriculum addressed resiliency and burn-out in an Internal Medicine Residency. It was extremely well received and can easily be expanded to other training programs or to providers outside of training.

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A Framework for a New Approach to Empower Users Through Low-Cost and Do-It-Yourself Assistive Technology

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ◽

10.3390/ijerph18063039 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 18 (6) ◽

pp. 3039

Author(s):

Thais Pousada García ◽

Jessica Garabal-Barbeira ◽

Patricia Porto Trillo ◽

Olalla Vilar Figueira ◽

Cristina Novo Díaz ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Assistive Technology ◽

Outcome Measures ◽

Design Thinking ◽

Low Cost ◽

Well Being ◽

Pilot Project ◽

Assistive Device ◽

Preliminary Results ◽

Do It Yourself ◽

Principles Of Design

Background: Assistive Technology (AT) refers to “assistive products and related systems and services developed for people to maintain or improve functioning and thereby to promote well-being”. Improving the process of design and creation of assistive products is an important step towards strengthening AT provision. Purpose: (1) to present a framework for designing and creating Low-Cost AT; (2) to display the preliminary results and evidence derived from applying the framework. Methodology: First, an evidence-based process was applied to develop and conceptualize the framework. Then, a pilot project to validate the framework was carried out. The sample was formed by 11 people with disabilities. The measure instruments were specific questionnaire, several forms of the Matching Person-Technology model, the Psychosocial Impact of Assistive Device Scale, and a tool to assess the usability and universal design of AT. Results: The framework integrates three phases: Identification (Design), Creation (Making the prototype), and Implementation (Outcome Measures), based on the principles of Design Thinking, and with a user-centered perspective. The preliminary results showed the coherence of the entire process and its applicability. The matching between person and device was high, representing the importance of involving the user in the design and selection of AT. Conclusions: The framework is a guide for professionals and users to apply a Low-Cost and Do-It-Yourself perspective to the provision of AT. It highlights the importance of monitoring the entire procedure and measuring the effects, by applying the outcome measures.

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