Highly Accurate Pose Estimation as a Reference for Autonomous Vehicles in Near-Range Scenarios

To validate the accuracy and reliability of onboard sensors for object detection and localization for driver assistance, as well as autonomous driving applications under realistic conditions (indoors and outdoors), a novel tracking system is presented. This tracking system is developed to determine the position and orientation of a slow-moving vehicle during test maneuvers within a reference environment (e.g., car during parking maneuvers), independent of the onboard sensors. One requirement is a 6 degree of freedom (DoF) pose with position uncertainty below 5 mm (3σ), orientation uncertainty below 0.3° (3σ), at a frequency higher than 20 Hz, and with a latency smaller than 500 ms. To compare the results from the reference system with the vehicle’s onboard system, synchronization via a Precision Time Protocol (PTP) and system interoperability to a robot operating system (ROS) are achieved. The developed system combines motion capture cameras mounted in a 360° panorama view setup on the vehicle, measuring retroreflective markers distributed over the test site with known coordinates, while robotic total stations measure a prism on the vehicle. A point cloud of the test site serves as a digital twin of the environment, in which the movement of the vehicle is visualized. The results have shown that the fused measurements of these sensors complement each other, so that the accuracy requirements for the 6 DoF pose can be met while allowing a flexible installation in different environments.

Highly Accurate Pose Estimation as Reference for Autonomous Vehicles in Near-Range Scenarios

To validate the accuracy and reliability of onboard sensors for object detection and localization in driver assistance, as well as autonomous driving applications under realistic conditions (indoors and outdoors), a novel tracking system is presented. This tracking system is developed to determine the position and orientation of a slow-moving vehicle (e.g. car during parking maneuvers), independent of the onboard sensors, during test maneuvers within a reference environment. One requirement is a 6 degree of freedom (DoF) pose with a position uncertainty below 5 mm (3σ), an orientation uncertainty below 0.3° (3σ) at a frequency higher than 20 Hz, and a latency smaller than 500 ms. To compare the results from the reference system with the vehicle’s onboard system, a synchronization via Precision Time Protocol (PTP) and a system interoperability to Robot Operating System (ROS) is implemented. The developed system combines motion capture cameras mounted in a 360° panorama view set-up on the vehicle with robotic total stations. A point cloud of the test site serves as a digital twin of the environment, in which the movement of the vehicle is simulated. Results have shown that the fused measurements of these sensors complement each other, so that the accuracy requirements for the 6 DoF pose can be met, while allowing a flexible installation in different environments.

Diversification of Legislation Editing Open Software (LEOS) Using Software Agents—Transforming Parliamentary Control of the Hellenic Parliament into Big Open Legal Data

The accessibility and reuse of legal data is paramount for promoting transparency, accountability and, ultimately, trust towards governance institutions. The aggregation of structured and semi-structured legal data inevitably leads to the big data realm and a series of challenges for the generation, handling, and analysis of large datasets. When it comes to data generation, LEOS represents a legal informatics tool that is maturing quickly. Now in its third release, it effectively supports the drafting of legal documents using Akoma Ntoso compatible schemes. However, the tool, originally developed for cooperative legislative drafting, can be repurposed to draft parliamentary control documents. This is achieved through the use of actor-oriented software components, referred to as software agents, which enable system interoperability by interlinking the text editing system with parliamentary control datasets. A validated corpus of written questions from the Hellenic Parliament is used to evaluate the feasibility of the endeavour, and the feasibility of using it as an authoring tool for written parliamentary questions and generation of standardised, open, legislative data. Systemic integration not only proves the tool’s versatility, but also opens up new grounds in interoperability between formerly unrelated legal systems and data sources.

Experiences from Exporting Major Proof Assistant Libraries

The interoperability of proof assistants and the integration of their libraries is a highly valued but elusive goal in the field of theorem proving. As a preparatory step, in previous work, we translated the libraries of multiple proof assistants, specifically the ones of Coq, HOL Light, IMPS, Isabelle, Mizar, and PVS into a universal format: OMDoc/MMT. Each translation presented great theoretical, technical, and social challenges, some universal and some system-specific, some solvable and some still open. In this paper, we survey these challenges and compare and evaluate the solutions we chose. We believe similar library translations will be an essential part of any future system interoperability solution, and our experiences will prove valuable to others undertaking such efforts.

Taking control of your own pervasive mHealth Data: A Proof of Concept using a configurable Blockchain and mHealth application on iOS and Android devices (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Background: Blockchains offer a promising new distributed technology to address the challenges of data standardization, system interoperability, security, privacy, and accessibility for all data. However, integrating pervasive computing with blockchain’s ability to store privacy-protected mHealth data while providing HIPAA compliance is a challenge. Patients use a multitude of devices, apps, and services to collect and store mHealth data. Before the advent of blockchains, providing anonymized privacy controlled single point of access for different data sources for each user was a challenging problem. We present the design of an IoT-based configurable blockchain with different mHealth applications on iOS and Android collecting the same user’s data. We discuss the advantages of using such a blockchain architecture and demonstrate two things – the ease with which users can retain full control of their pervasive mHealth data and the ease with which HIPAA compliance can be accomplished by provider(s) who choose to access user data. We also allude to the future of shareable and tradeable data with our paper. OBJECTIVE Objective: The purpose of this paper is to design, evaluate and test IoT-based mHealth data using wearable devices using an efficient configurable blockchain designed and implemented ground up to store such data. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the privacy-preserving and HIPAA-compliant nature of pervasive computing-based personalized healthcare systems that give users total control of their own data. METHODS Methods: This paper followed the methodical design science approach adapted in information systems wherein we evaluate prior designs, propose enhancements with a Blockchain design pattern published by the same author(s), and use the design to support IoT transactions. We prototype both the blockchain and the IoT-based mHealth applications in different devices and test all use cases that formed the design goals for such a system. Specifically, we validate the design goals for our system using the HIPAA checklist for businesses and prove compliance of our architecture for mHealth data on pervasive computing devices. RESULTS Results: Blockchain-based personalized healthcare systems provide several advantages over traditional systems. They support the following features: provide and support extreme privacy protection, ability to share personalized data, provide the ability to delete data upon request, and support the ability to work on data. CONCLUSIONS Conclusions: We conclude that blockchain(s) and specifically the CHASM architecture presented in this paper, with configurable module(s) and a Software as a service Model provide many advantages for patients using pervasive devices that store mHealth data on the blockchain. Among them, is the ability to store, retrieve and modify one(s) generated healthcare data with a single private key across devices. This data is transparent and stored perennially and provides patients the privacy and pseudo-anonymity in addition to very strong encryption for data access. Firms and Device manufacturers would be benefited from such an approach wherein they relinquish user data control, while giving users the ability to select and offer their own mHealth data on data marketplaces. We show that such an architecture complies with the stringent requirements of HIPAA for patient data access.

HTA Reshaping: Rethinking the Health Technology Assessment Framework in Portugal

<b><i>Introduction:</i></b> Health technology assessment (HTA) aims to provide decision makers with relevant data to make informed choices. Recent changes in the Portuguese HTA framework have altered substantially the assessment methodology with regard to economic evaluation, with potential impacts on access and process efficiency. The HTA Reshaping Project had as its main objective informing the debate on HTA in Portugal, thereby identifying improvement opportunities and solutions to the HTA framework that address future challenges. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> The project comprised several phases, i.e., (1) mapping and evaluation of different HTA frameworks across Europe, identifying best practices and key variables to consider in future frameworks; (2) conduction of in-depth interviews with relevant stakeholders (<i>n</i> = 11); and (3) development of 2 workshops – one with young professionals (<i>n</i> = 12) and another with relevant HTA stakeholders (<i>n</i> = 19) – to consolidate and further explore vital elements of HTA, aimed at brainstorming ideas and developing solutions to improve some of the most critical points, with a view to addressing future challenges. <b><i>Results:</i></b> The comparison of HTA frameworks showed that their purpose and sophistication vary across European countries. For example, the need for economic evidence is not unanimous, and reimbursement agreements vary considerably. Among the stakeholders interviewed there was a high level of agreement on priorities that should be addressed, e.g., expanding and creating national level registries and assuring patient participation throughout the HTA process. The possibility of using managed entry agreements to enhance patients’ access, applying multi-indication pricing for medicines with different therapeutic values per indication, and improvement of registry/system interoperability gathered a moderate level of agreement. <b><i>Conclusions:</i></b> The Portuguese HTA framework might be further adapted to upcoming challenges and should evolve to improve access to innovative therapies. There is still a long path towards the convergence of HTA frameworks in EU member states.

ORCID IDs in the open knowledge era

The focus of this poster is to highlight the importance of sufficient metadata in ORCID records for the purpose of name disambiguation. In 2017 the authors counted ORCID iDs containing minimal information. They invoked RESTful API calls using Postman software and searched ORCID records created between 2012–2017 that did not include affiliation or organization name, Ringgold ID, and any work titles. A year later, they reproduced the same API calls and compared with the results achieved the year before. The results reveal that a high number of records are still minimal or orphan, thus making the name disambiguation process difficult. The authors recognize the benefit of a unique identifier that facilitates name disambiguation and remain confident that with continued work in the areas of system interoperability and technical integration, alongside continued advocacy and outreach, ORCID will grow and develop not only in number of iDs but also in metadata robustness.

ORCID IDs in the open knowledge era

The focus of this poster is to highlight the importance of sufficient metadata in ORCID records for the purpose of name disambiguation. In 2017 the authors counted ORCID iDs containing minimal information. They invoked RESTful API calls using Postman software and searched ORCID records created between 2012–2017 that did not include affiliation or organization name, Ringgold ID, and any work titles. A year later, they reproduced the same API calls and compared with the results achieved the year before. The results reveal that a high number of records are still minimal or orphan, thus making the name disambiguation process difficult. The authors recognize the benefit of a unique identifier that facilitates name disambiguation and remain confident that with continued work in the areas of system interoperability and technical integration, alongside continued advocacy and outreach, ORCID will grow and develop not only in number of iDs but also in metadata robustness.