Question: Influence of wireless communication technologies on the healthcare of elderly individuals: The case of smart homes in Australia.

This review explores the evolution and current landscape of ambient-assisted living (AAL) solutions tailored for senior citizens, in light of the escalating global aging population. The escalating costs of professional healthcare, the strain on caregivers, and the strong desire among the elderly to maintain independence in their own homes, have collectively driven the innovation of AAL technologies. These technologies, rooted in the concept of ambient intelligence, aim to facilitate safe and autonomous living for the elderly. We provide a comprehensive overview of the latest advancements in AAL tools and techniques, as well as the challenges that need to be addressed for their effective implementation. This includes a critical examination of the technological, social, and ethical aspects associated with AAL systems, particularly in the context of creating smart homes that cater to the needs of the elderly population in Australia.

Network devices for the home such as remotely controllable locks, lights, thermostats, cameras, and motion sensors are now readily available and inexpensive. In theory, this enables scenarios like remotely monitoring cameras from a smartphone or customizing climate control based on occupancy patterns. However, in practice today, such smarthome scenarios are limited to expert hobbyists and the rich because of the high overhead of managing and extending current technology. We present HomeOS, a platform that bridges this gap by presenting users and developers with a PC-like abstraction for technology in the home. It presents network devices as peripherals with abstract interfaces, enables cross-device tasks via applications written against these interfaces, and gives users a management interface designed for the home environment. HomeOS already has tens of applications and supports a wide range of devices. It has been running in 12 real homes for 4–8 months, and 42 students have built new applications and added support for additional devices independent of our efforts.

the main concern in systems development is the integration of technologies to increase customer satisfaction. Research presented in this paper focuses mainly in three things first to understand the speech or voice of user second is to control the home appliances through voice call and third is to finds intrusion in the house. The user can make a voice call in order to perform certain actions such as switching lights on/off, getting the status of any appliance etc. And when system finds intrusion it sends an alert voice message to preconfigured cell when the user is away from the place. The proposed system is implemented using voice Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and wireless technology based on .NET framework and Attention (AT) commands. Microsoft speech reorganization engine, speech SDK 5.1 is used to understand the voice command of user. As it is wireless so more cost effective and easy to use. The GSM technology used in system provide the everywhere access of the system for security. Experimental results show that the system is more secure and cost effective as compared to existing systems. We conclude that this system provides solution for the problems faced by home owner in daily life and make their life easy and comfortable by proposing cost effective and reliable solution. Keywords-component; Voice GSM; Voice message; radio friquencey (RF); AT commands.

Today's work environment is shaped by the electronic age. Smartphones are important tools that allow employees to work anywhere and anytime. The aim of this diary study was to examine daily smartphone use after and during work and their association with psychological detachment (in the home domain) and work engagement (in the work domain), respectively. We explored whether workplace telepressure, which is a strong urge to respond to work-related messages and a preoccupation with quick response times, promotes smartphone use. Furthermore, we hypothesized that employees experiencing high workplace telepressure would have more trouble letting go of the workday during the evening and feel less engaged during their workday to the extent that they use their smartphone more intensively across domains. A total of 116 employees using their smartphones for work-related purposes completed diary questionnaires on five workdays (N = 476 data points) assessing their work-related smartphone use, psychological detachment after work, and engagement during work. Workplace telepressure was measured as a between-individual variable and only assessed at the beginning of the study, as well as relevant control variables such as participants' workload and segmentation preference (a preference for work and home domains to be as segmented as possible). Multilevel path analyses revealed that work-related smartphone use after work was negatively related to psychological detachment irrespective of employees' experienced workplace telepressure, and daily smartphone use during work was unrelated to work engagement. Supporting our hypothesis, employees who reported high telepressure experienced less work engagement on days that they used their smartphone more intensively during work. Altogether, intensive smartphone use after work hampers employees' psychological detachment, whereas intensive smartphone use during work undermines their work engagement only when employees experience high workplace telepressure as well. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

With the proliferation of smart devices, Internet can be extended into the physical realm of Internet-of-Things (IoT) by deploying them into a communicating-actuating network. In Ion, sensors and actuators blend seamlessly with the environment; collaborate globally with each other through internet to accomplish a specific task. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) can be integrated into Ion to meet the challenges of seamless communication between any things (e.g., humans or objects). The potentialities of IoT can be brought to the benefit of society by developing novel applications in transportation and logistics, healthcare, agriculture, smart environment (home, office or plant). This research gives a framework of optimizing resources (water, fertilizers, insecticides and manual labour) in agriculture through the use of IoT. The issues involved in the implementation of applications are also investigated in the paper. This frame work is named as AgriTech.

In recent years, the home environment has seen a rapid introduction of network enabled digital technology. This technology offers new and exciting opportunities to increase the connectivity of devices within the home for the purpose of home automation. Moreover, with the rapid expansion of the Internet, there is the added potential for the remote control and monitoring of such network enabled devices. However, the adoption of home automation systems has been slow. This paper identifies the reasons for this slow adoption and evaluates the potential of ZigBee for addressing these problems through the design and implementation of a flexible home automation architecture. A ZigBee based home automation system and Wi-Fi network are integrated through a common home gateway. The home gateway provides network interoperability, a simple and flexible user interface, and remote access to the system. A dedicated virtual home is implemented to cater for the system's security and safety needs. To demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed system, four devices, a light switch, radiator valve, safety sensor and ZigBee remote control have been developed and evaluated with the home automation system.

Wireless Sensing Technology is widely used everywhere in the current scientific world. As the technology is growing and changing rapidly, Wireless sensing Network (WSN) helps to upgrade the technology. In the research field of wireless sensor networks the power efficient time is a major issue. This problem can be overcome by using the ZigBee technology. The main idea of this is to understand how data travels through a wireless medium transmission using wireless sensor network and monitoring system. This paper design an irrigation system which is automated by using controllable parameter such as temperature, soil moisture and air humidity because they are the important factors to be controlled in PA(Precision Agricultures).

Recently, several researches concerning with smart and connected communities have been studied. Soon the 4G / 5G technology becomes popular, and cellular base stations will be located densely in the urban space. They may offer intelligent services for autonomous driving, urban environment improvement, disaster mitigation, elderly/disabled people support and so on. Such infrastructure might function as edge servers for disaster support base. In this paper, we enumerate several research issues to be developed in the ICDCS community in the next decade in order for building safe, smart cities resistant to disasters. In particular, we focus on (A) up-to-date urban crowd mobility prediction and (B) resilient disaster information gathering mechanisms based on the edge computing paradigm. We investigate recent related works and projects, and introduce our on-going research work and insight for disaster mitigation.

M-Learning is a new learning paradigm of the new social structure with mobile and wireless technologies. Smart school is one of the four flagship applications for Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) under Malaysian government initiative to improve education standard in the country. With the advances of mobile devices technologies, mobile learning could help the government in realizing the initiative. This paper discusses the prospect of implementing mobile learning for primary school students. It indicates significant and challenges and analysis of user perceptions on potential mobile applications through a survey done in primary school context. The authors propose the m-Learning for mathematics by allowing the extension of technology in the traditional classroom in term of learning and teaching.

The high risk of falls and the substantial increase in the elderly population have recently stimulated scientific research on Smartphone-based fall detection systems. Even though these systems are helpful for fall detection, the best way to reduce the number of falls and their consequences is to predict and prevent them from happening in the first place. To address the issue of fall prevention, in this paper, we propose a fall prediction system by integrating the sensor data of Smartphones and a Smartshoe. We designed and implemented a Smartshoe that contains four pressure sensors with a Wi-Fi communication module to unobtrusively collect data in any environment. By assimilating the Smartshoe and Smartphone sensors data, we performed an extensive set of experiments to evaluate normal and abnormal walking patterns. The system can generate an alert message in the Smartphone to warn the user about the high-risk gait patterns and potentially save them from an imminent fall. We validated our approach using a decision tree with 10-fold cross validation and found 97.2% accuracy in gait abnormality detection.

Nowadays, Smart Cities are positioned as one of the most challenging and important research topics, highlighting major changes in people's lifestyle. Technologies such as smart energy, smart transportation or smart health are being designed to improve citizen's quality of life. Smart Cities leverage the deployment of a network of devices - sensors and mobile devices-, all connected through different means and/or technologies, according to their network availability and capacities, setting a novel framework feeding end-users with an innovative set of smart services. Aligned to this objective, a typical Smart City architecture is organized into layers, including a sensing layer (generates data), a network layer (moves the data), a middleware layer (manages all collected data and makes it ready for usage) and an application layer (provides the smart services benefiting from this data). In this paper a real Smart City is analyzed, corresponding to the city of Barcelona, with special emphasis on the layers responsible for collecting the data generated by the deployed sensors. The amount of daily sensors data transmitted through the network has been estimated and a rough projection has been made assuming an exhaustive deployment that fully covers all city. Finally, we discuss some solutions to both reduce the data transmission and improve the data management.


Question: Influence of wireless communication technologies on elderly healthcare: The case of smart homes in Australia.

An Insight into Smart Health Monitoring Systems: Design, Modeling, and Clinical Impact
The evolution of health monitoring systems over the past two decades has significantly transformed the landscape of healthcare delivery, offering automated patient monitoring and improved workflow management. This paper delves into an exhaustive review and analysis of smart health monitoring systems, focusing on their design, modeling, and clinical effectiveness. A critical examination of the systems' efficiency, acceptability in clinical environments, and strategies to enhance their performance is presented. The primary objective is to assess the current state of the art in monitoring systems and conduct a comprehensive analysis of the findings in the domain of smart health monitoring. To achieve this, a selection of over fifty monitoring systems has been meticulously categorized, classified, and compared. The discussion encompasses significant advancements at the system design level, challenges encountered by healthcare providers, and potential hurdles facing the health monitoring field, juxtaposed against other comparable systems.

This paper aims to provide a comprehensive understanding of the impact of smart health monitoring systems on healthcare, particularly in the context of elder care in Australia. By exploring design principles, modeling techniques, and clinical outcomes, the paper offers insights into the potential of these systems to revolutionize elder care through wireless communications technologies. The analysis covers the current state of the art, identifies gaps and challenges, and suggests strategies to optimize the benefits of smart health monitoring systems for elder care. Through an in-depth examination of over fifty systems, the paper highlights the advancements and issues in health monitoring, providing a roadmap for the future of elder healthcare in the smart home environment of Australia.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is entering the daily operation of many industries; applications include but are not limited to smart cities, smart grids, smart homes, physical security, e-health, asset management, and logistics. For example, the concept of smart cities is emerging in multiple continents, where enhanced street lighting controls, infrastructure monitoring, public safety and surveillance, physical security, gunshot detection, meter reading, and transportation analysis and optimization systems are being deployed on a city-wide scale. A related and cost-effective user-level IoT application is the support of IoT-enabled smart buildings. Commercial space has substantial requirements in terms of comfort, usability, security, and energy management. IoT-based systems can support these requirements in an organic manner. In particular, power over Ethernet, as part of an IoT-based solution, offers disruptive opportunities in revolutionizing the in-building connectivity of a large swath of devices. However, a number of deployment-limiting issues currently impact the scope of IoT utilization, including lack of comprehensive end-to-end standards, fragmented cybersecurity solutions, and a relative dearth of fully-developed vertical applications. This paper reviews some of the technical opportunities offered and the technical challenges faced by the IoT in the smart building arena.

Mobile health technologies offer great promise for reducing healthcare costs and improving patient care. Wearable and implantable technologies are contributing to a transformation in the mobile health era in terms of improving healthcare and health outcomes and providing real-time guidance on improved health management and tracking. In this article, we review the biomedical applications of wearable and implantable medical devices and sensors, ranging from monitoring to prevention of diseases, as well as the materials used in the fabrication of these devices and the standards for wireless medical devices and mobile applications. We conclude by discussing some of the technical challenges in wearable and implantable technology and possible solutions for overcoming these difficulties.

Background: The number of people aged 60 and older is increasing faster than other age groups worldwide. Iran will experience a sharp aging population increase in the next decades, and this will pose new challenges to the healthcare system. Since providing high quality aged-care services would be the major concern of the policymakers, this question arises that what types of aged care services should be organized in the coming 10 years? This protocol has been designed to develop a set of scenarios for the future of elderly care in Iran. Methods: In this study, intuitive logics approach and Global Business Network (GBN) model were used to develop scenarios for elderly care in Iran. In terms of perspective, the scenarios in this approach are normative, qualitative with respect to methodology and deductive in constructing the process of scenarios. The three phases of GBN model are as follows: 1) Orientation: Identifying strategic levels, stakeholders, participants and time horizon; 2) Exploration: Identifying the driving forces and key uncertainties; 3) Synthesis: Defining the scenario logics and constructing scenario storyline. Results: Presently, two phases are completed and the results will be published in mid-2016. Conclusion: This study delivers a comprehensive framework for taking appropriate actions in providing care for the elderly in the future. Moreover, policy makers should specify and provide the full range of services for the elderly, and in doing so, the scenarios and key findings of this study could be of valuable help.

Healthcare innovation has made progressive strides. Innovative solutions now tend to incorporate device integration, data collection and data analysis linked across a diverse range of actors building platform-centric healthcare ecosystems. The interconnectedness and inter-disciplinarity of the ecosystems bring with it a number of vital issues around how to strategically manage such a complex system. This paper highlights the importance of innovation intermediaries particularly in a platform-centric ecosystem such as the healthcare industry. It serves as a reminder of why it is important for healthcare technologists to consider proactive ways to contribute to the innovation ecosystem by creating devices with the platform perspective in mind.

the main concern in systems development is the integration of technologies to increase customer satisfaction. Research presented in this paper focuses mainly in three things first to understand the speech or voice of user second is to control the home appliances through voice call and third is to finds intrusion in the house. The user can make a voice call in order to perform certain actions such as switching lights on/off, getting the status of any appliance etc. And when system finds intrusion it sends an alert voice message to preconfigured cell when the user is away from the place. The proposed system is implemented using voice Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and wireless technology based on .NET framework and Attention (AT) commands. Microsoft speech reorganization engine, speech SDK 5.1 is used to understand the voice command of user. As it is wireless so more cost effective and easy to use. The GSM technology used in system provide the everywhere access of the system for security. Experimental results show that the system is more secure and cost effective as compared to existing systems. We conclude that this system provides solution for the problems faced by home owner in daily life and make their life easy and comfortable by proposing cost effective and reliable solution. Keywords-component; Voice GSM; Voice message; radio friquencey (RF); AT commands.

Cardiac telemedicine systems facilitate treatment of patients by sending blood pressure and cardiac performance information to hospitals and medical emergency care units. Location-based services can be used in mobile cardiac telemedicine systems to improve efficiency, robustness and accuracy. This paper proposes a combination of mobile telemedicine systems and location-based services that will enable hospitals and emergency departments to do continuous monitoring of a patient’s heart activity; such a system would decrease the probability of critical condition patients in emergency cases and increase the chance of saving lives. In order to evaluate whether this kind of health care system might work, we explore the success factors for such a system by adapting the DeLone & McLean IS success model to the context of location-based mobile system in cardiac healthcare. After reviewing previous works, we identify fourteen factors which can affect the success of a location-based mobile cardiac telemedicine system: Realization of user expectations, Portability, Accessibility, Extent of data processing, Time response, Urgency, Currency, Sufficiency, Understandability, Reliability, Extent of Mobility (spatial, temporal, contextual), System support, Responsiveness, and Assurance. We apply these factors to propose a success model for our location-based mobile cardiac telemedicine system.

The impact of air quality on health and on life comfort is well established. In many societies, vulnerable elderly and young populations spend most of their time indoors. Therefore, indoor air quality monitoring (IAQM) is of great importance to human health. Engineers and researchers are increasingly focusing their efforts on the design of real-time IAQM systems using wireless sensor networks. This paper presents an end-to-end IAQM system enabling measurement of CO₂, CO, SO₂, NO₂, O₃, Cl₂, ambient temperature, and relative humidity. In IAQM systems, remote users usually use a local gateway to connect wireless sensor nodes in a given monitoring site to the external world for ubiquitous access of data. In this work, the role of the gateway in processing collected air quality data and its reliable dissemination to end-users through a web-server is emphasized. A mechanism for the backup and the restoration of the collected data in the case of Internet outage is presented. The system is adapted to an open-source Internet-of-Things (IoT) web-server platform, called Emoncms, for live monitoring and long-term storage of the collected IAQM data. A modular IAQM architecture is adopted, which results in a smart scalable system that allows seamless integration of various sensing technologies, wireless sensor networks (WSNs) and smart mobile standards. The paper gives full hardware and software details of the proposed solution. Sample IAQM results collected in various locations are also presented to demonstrate the abilities of the system.

The evolution of smartphones together with increasing computational power has empowered developers to create innovative context-aware applications for recognizing user-related social and cognitive activities in any situation and at any location. The existence and awareness of the context provide the capability of being conscious of physical environments or situations around mobile device users. This allows network services to respond proactively and intelligently based on such awareness. The key idea behind context-aware applications is to encourage users to collect, analyze, and share local sensory knowledge in the purpose for a large-scale community use by creating a smart network. The desired network is capable of making autonomous logical decisions to actuate environmental objects and also assist individuals. However, many open challenges remain, which are mostly arisen because the middleware services provided in mobile devices have limited resources in terms of power, memory, and bandwidth. Thus, it becomes critically important to study how the drawbacks can be elaborated and resolved and, at the same time, better understand the opportunities for the research community to contribute to the context-awareness. To this end, this paper surveys the literature over the period of 1991-2014 from the emerging concepts to applications of context-awareness in mobile platforms by providing up-to-date research and future research directions. Moreover, it points out the challenges faced in this regard and enlightens them by proposing possible solutions.

Low power consumption, low transceiver chip cost and large coverage area are the main characteristics of the low power wide area networks (LPWAN) technologies. We expect that LPWAN can be part of enabling new human-centric health and wellness monitoring applications. Therefore in this work we study the indoor performance of one LPWAN technology, namely LoRa, by the means of real-life measurements. The measurements were conducted using the commercially available equipment in the main campus of the University of Oulu, Finland, which has an indoor area spanning for over 570 meters North to South and over 320 meters East to West. The measurements were executed for a sensor node operating close to human body that was periodically reporting the sensed data to a base station. The obtained results show that when using 14 dBm transmit power and the largest spreading factor of 12 for the 868 MHz ISM band, the whole campus area can be covered. Measured packet success delivery ratio was 96.7 % without acknowledgements and retransmissions.

This paper is concerned with constructing a prototype smart home environment which has been built in the research building of Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH) to demonstrate the practicability of a robot-assisted future home environment. Key functionalities that a home service robot must provide are localization, navigation, object recognition and object handling. A considerable amount of research has been conducted to make the service robot perform these operations with its own sensors, actuators and a knowledge database. With all heavy sensors, actuators and a database, the robot could have performed the given tasks in a limited environment or showed the limited capabilities in a natural environment. We initiated a smart home environment project for light-weight service robots to provide reliable services by interacting with the environment through the wireless sensor networks. This environment consists of the following three main components: smart objects with an radio frequency identification (RFID) tag and smart appliances with sensor network functionality; the home server that connects smart devices as well as maintains information for reliable services; and the service robots that perform tasks in collaboration with the environment. In this paper, we introduce various types of smart devices which are developed for assisting the robot by providing sensing and actuation, and present our approach on the integration of these devices to construct the smart home environment. Finally, we discuss the future directions of our project.


Question: Influence of wireless communication technologies on elderly healthcare: The case of smart homes in Australia.

Smart Dwellings and Their Inhabitants: An Analytical Review and Emerging Challenges

The scholarly discourse surrounding smart homes and their occupants is expanding rapidly, yet a comprehensive grasp of the demographics and usage patterns of these occupants remains elusive, particularly in a sector predominantly steered by technological innovators. This paper offers a systematic examination of the peer-reviewed literature focusing on smart homes and their users, aiming to consolidate the major research narratives and to highlight the intersections and gaps between these narratives. The analysis is structured around nine key themes, which are further categorized into three overarching categories: (1) Perspectives on Smart Homes—functional, instrumental, and socio-technical; (2) Users and Their Engagement with Smart Homes—anticipated users, interaction dynamics, and decision-making, alongside the practical application of technologies within the home; and (3) Obstacles in Implementing Smart Homes—pertaining to hardware and software, design principles, and the process of integrating technology into daily life. This systematic review synthesizes these themes into a cohesive framework for guiding future research, pinpointing the existence or lack thereof of interconnections between diverse interpretations of smart homes and their occupants. The utility of this framework is exemplified through an in-depth exploration of two pivotal yet underexplored areas—privacy and control—which have been conventionally oversimplified, thereby hindering nuanced understanding and the formulation of effective solutions. The proposed framework encourages future research endeavors to delve into and foster interrelations between the identified research themes, thereby enriching the discourse on smart homes and their users.

Traditional power grids are currently being transformed into smart grids (SGs). SGs feature multi-way communication among energy generation, transmission, distribution, and usage facilities. The reliable, efficient, and intelligent management of complex power systems requires integration of high-speed, reliable, and secure data information and communication technology into the SGs to monitor and regulate power generation and usage. Despite several challenges, such as trade-offs between wireless coverage and capacity as well as limited spectral resources in SGs, wireless communication is a promising SG communications technology. Cognitive radio networks (CRNs) in particular are highly promising for providing timely SG wireless communications by utilizing all available spectrum resources. We provide in this paper a comprehensive survey on the CRN communication paradigm in SGs, including the system architecture, communication network compositions, applications, and CR-based communication technologies. We highlight potential applications of CR-based SG systems. We survey CR-based spectrum sensing approaches with their major classifications. We also provide a survey on CR-based routing and MAC protocols, and describe interference mitigation schemes. We furthermore present open issues and research challenges faced by CR-based SG networks along with future directions.

The systems based on intelligent sensors are currently expanding, due to theirs functions and theirs performances of intelligence: transmitting and receiving data in real-time, computation and processing algorithms, metrology remote, diagnostics, automation and storage measurements...The radio frequency wireless communication with its multitude offers a better solution for data traffic in this kind of systems. The mains objectives of this paper is to present a solution of the problem related to the selection criteria of a better wireless communication technology face up to the constraints imposed by the intended application and the evaluation of its key features. The comparison between the different wireless technologies (WiFi, Wi-Max, UWB, Bluetooth, ZigBee, ZigBeeIP, GSM/GPRS) focuses on their performance which depends on the areas of utilization. Furthermore, it shows the limits of their characteristics. Study findings can be used by the developers/ engineers to deduce the optimal mode to integrate and to operate a system that guarantees quality of communication, minimizing energy consumption, reducing the implementation cost and avoiding time constraints. Keywords—Wireless communications; Performances; Energy; Protocols; Intelligent sensors; Applications

This paper presents the state of the art from the available literature on mobile health care. The study was performed by means of a systematic review, a way of assessing and interpreting all available research on a particular topic in a given area, using a reliable and rigorous method. From an initial amount of 1,482 papers, we extracted and analysed data via a full reading of 40 (2.69%) of the papers that matched our selection criteria. Our analysis since 2010 show current development in 10 application areas and present ongoing trends and technical hallenges on the subject. The application areas include: patient monitoring, infrastructure, software architecture, modeling, framework, security, fications, multimedia, mobile cloud computing, and literature reviews on the topic. The most relevant challenges include the low battery life of devices, ultiplatform development, data transmission and security. Our paper consolidates ecent findings in the field and serves as a resourceful guide for future research planning and development.

Currently the 2 percent growth rate for the world's older population exceeds the 1.2 rate for the world's population as a whole. By 2050, the number of individuals over the age 85 is projected to be three times more than there is today. Most of these individuals will need physical, emotional, and cognitive assistance. In this paper, we present a new adaptive robotic system based on the socially assistive robotics (SAR) technology that tries to provide a customized help protocol through motivation, encouragements, and companionship to users suffering from cognitive changes related to aging and/or Alzheimer's disease. Our results show that this approach can engage the patients and keep them interested in interacting with the robot, which, in turn, increases their positive behavior.

Recently, rapid increase of mobile devices pushed the radio frequency (RF)-based wireless technologies to their limits. Free-space-optical (FSO), a.k.a. optical wireless, communication has been considered as one of the viable solutions to respond to the ever-increasing wireless capacity demand. Particularly, Visible Light Communication (VLC) which uses light emitting diode (LED) based smart lighting technology provides an opportunity and infrastructure for the high-speed low-cost wireless communication. Though stemming from the same core technology, the smart lighting and FSO communication have inherent tradeoffs amongst each other. In this paper, we present a tutorial and survey of advances in these two technologies and explore the potential for integration of the two as a single field of study: LIGHTNETs. We focus our survey to the context of mobile communications given the recent pressing needs in mobile wireless networking. We deliberate on key challenges involved in designing technologies jointly performing the two functions simultaneously: LIGHTing and NETworking.

As the research in Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) matures, we expect that data generated from AAL IoT devices will benefit from analysis by well established machine learning techniques. There is also potential that new research in ML and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used on data generated from the sensors used in AAL. In this paper we present a survey of the research in the related topics, identify its shortcomings and propose future work that will integrate these fields by collecting ambient sensor data and process the data by ML framework which can detect and classify activities.

Low voltage electrical wiring in homes has largely been dismissed as too noisy and unpredictable to support high speed communication signals. However, recent advances in communication and modulation methodologies as well as in adaptive digital signal processing and error detection and correction have spawned novel media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY) protocols, capable of supporting power line communication networks at speeds comparable to wired local area networks (LANs). In this paper we motivate the use of power line LAN’s as a basic infrastructure for building integrated ”smart homes,” wherein information appliances (IA)—ranging from simple control or monitoring devices to multimedia entertainment systems—are seamlessly interconnected by the very wires which provide them electricity. By simulation and actual measurements using ”reference design” prototype commercial powerline products, we show that the HomePlugMAC and PHY layers can guarantee QoS for real-time communications, supporting delay sensitive data streams for ”Smart Home” applications.

Usefulness of health care services is seriously effected by medication adherence. Medication intake is one of the cases where adherence may be difficult for the patients, who are willing to undertake the prescribed therapy. Internet of Things (IoT) infrastructure for activity monitoring is a strong candidate solution to maintain adherence of forgetful patients. In this study, we propose an IoT framework where medication intake is ensured with real time continuous activity recognition. We present our use case with the focus of application and network layers. We utilize an activity classification scheme, which considers inter-activity detection consistency based on non-predefined feature extraction as the application layer. The network layer includes a gateway structure ensuring end-to-end reliability in the connection between a wireless sensor network (WSN) and Internet. Results obtained in simulation environment suggest that the selected application and network layers introduce a feasible solution for the medication intake use case.

Internet evolution has been recently related with some aspect of user empowerment, mostly in terms of content distribution, and this has been ultimately accelerated by the fast-paced introduction and expansion of wireless technologies. Hence, the Internet should start to be seen as a communications infrastructure able to support the integration of a myriad of embedded and personal wireless objects. This way a future Internet will support the interaction between users’ social, physical and virtual sphere. This position paper aims to raise some discussion about the technology required to ensure an efficient interaction between the physical, social and virtual worlds by extending the Internet by means of interconnected objects. Namely, it is argued that an efficient interaction between the physical, social and virtual worlds requires the development of a data-centric architecture based on IP-driven opportunisitc networking able to make useful data available to people when and where they really need it, augmenting their social and environmental awareness.

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) has been a key element in e-health to monitor bodies. This technology enables new applications under the umbrella of different domains, including the medical field, the entertainment and ambient intelligence areas. This survey paper places substantial emphasis on the concept and key features of the WBAN technology. First, the WBAN concept is introduced and a review of key applications facilitated by this networking technology is provided. The study then explores a wide variety of communication standards and methods deployed in this technology. Due to the sensitivity and criticality of the data carried and handled by WBAN, fault tolerance is a critical issue and widely discussed in this paper. Hence, this survey investigates thoroughly the reliability and fault tolerance paradigms suggested for WBANs. Open research and challenging issues pertaining to fault tolerance, coexistence and interference management and power consumption are also discussed along with some suggested trends in these aspects.


Question: Influence of wireless communication technologies on elderly healthcare: Smart homes in Australia.

This paper offers a comprehensive review of the field of time series clustering, which has gained prominence in the realm of temporal data mining. It highlights the significance of time series clustering in extracting valuable insights across diverse applications. The fundamentals of time series clustering are outlined, encompassing the conventional clustering algorithms typically employed in such studies, the evaluation metrics for assessing clustering efficacy, and the methodologies for assessing the similarity or dissimilarity between time series data—whether in raw form, through extracted features, or via model parameters. Previous research is categorized into three main clusters: those that directly manipulate raw data in either time or frequency domains, those that operate on features derived from the raw data, and those that work with models constructed from the original data. The paper critically evaluates the strengths and limitations of these approaches and identifies potential avenues for future research. Additionally, it compiles a list of application areas where time series clustering has been successfully deployed, alongside the types of data employed in these studies. This review is intended to serve as a foundational resource for researchers aiming to contribute to this evolving field of data analysis. 2005 Pattern Recognition Society. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

However, in relation to the impact of wireless communications technologies on elder healthcare, specifically focusing on smart homes in Australia, this review indirectly highlights the potential of time series clustering in healthcare monitoring systems. By clustering time series data from various sensors within smart homes, one can identify patterns and anomalies in the daily activities of elderly residents, which could be indicative of health issues. This technology can contribute to proactive healthcare management and improved quality of life for the elderly by enabling early detection of potential health problems. The review underscores the versatility of time series clustering algorithms and their adaptability to different data sources, making them a promising tool for enhancing elder healthcare through smart home technologies.

This paper is concerned with constructing a prototype smart home environment which has been built in the research building of Korea Institute of Industrial Technology (KITECH) to demonstrate the practicability of a robot-assisted future home environment. Key functionalities that a home service robot must provide are localization, navigation, object recognition and object handling. A considerable amount of research has been conducted to make the service robot perform these operations with its own sensors, actuators and a knowledge database. With all heavy sensors, actuators and a database, the robot could have performed the given tasks in a limited environment or showed the limited capabilities in a natural environment. We initiated a smart home environment project for light-weight service robots to provide reliable services by interacting with the environment through the wireless sensor networks. This environment consists of the following three main components: smart objects with an radio frequency identification (RFID) tag and smart appliances with sensor network functionality; the home server that connects smart devices as well as maintains information for reliable services; and the service robots that perform tasks in collaboration with the environment. In this paper, we introduce various types of smart devices which are developed for assisting the robot by providing sensing and actuation, and present our approach on the integration of these devices to construct the smart home environment. Finally, we discuss the future directions of our project.

The recent developments in remote healthcare systems have witnessed significant interests from IT industry (Microsoft, Google, VMware etc) that provide ubiquitous and easily deployable healthcare systems. These systems provide a platform to share medical information, applications, and infrastructure in a ubiquitous and fully automated manner. Communication security and patients' data privacy are the aspects that would increase the confidence of users in such remote healthcare systems. This paper presents a secure cloud-based mobile healthcare framework using wireless body area networks (WBANs). The research work presented here is twofold: first, it attempts to secure the inter-sensor communication by multi-biometric based key generation scheme in WBANs; and secondly, the electronic medical records (EMRs) are securely stored in the hospital community cloud and privacy of the patients' data is preserved. The evaluation and analysis shows that the proposed multi-biometric based mechanism provides significant security measures due to its highly efficient key generation mechanism.

The rapid growth of investment in information technology (IT) by organizations worldwide has made user acceptance an increasingly critical technology implementation a d management issue. While such acceptance has received fairly extensive attention from previous research, additional efforts are needed to examine or validate existing research results, particularly those involving different technologies, user populations, and/or organizational contexts. In response, this paper reports a research work that examined the applicability of the Technology Acceptance Model (ΤΑΜ) in explaining physicians' decisions to accept telemedicine technology in the health-care context. The technology, the user group, and the organizational context are all new to IT acceptance/adoption research. The study also addressed a pragmatic technology management need resulting from millions of dollars invested by healthcare organizations in developing and implementing telemedicine programs in recent years. The model's overall fit, explanatory power, and the individual causal links that it postulates were evaluated by examining the acceptance of telemedicine technology among physicians practicing at public tertiary hospitals in Hong Kong. Our results suggested that ΤΑΜ was able to provide a reasonable depiction of physicians' intention to use telemedicine technology. Perceived usefulness was found to be a significant determinant ofattitude and intention but perceived ease of use was not. The relatively low R-square of the model suggests both the limitations of the parsimonious model and the need for incorporating additional factors or integrating with other IT acceptance models in order to improve its specificity and explanatory utility in a health-care context. Based on the study findings, implications for user technology acceptance research and telemedicine management are discussed.

—This paper presents design and implementation concepts for a wireless real-time home automation system based on Arduino Uno microcontroller as central controllers. The proposed system has two operational modes. The first one is denoted as a manually–automated mode in which the user can monitor and control the home appliances from anywhere over the world using the cellular phone through Wi-Fi communication technology. The second one is referred to a self-automated mode that makes the controllers to be capable of monitoring and controlling different appliances in the home automatically in response to the signals comes from the related sensors. To support the usefulness of the proposed technique, a hardware implementation with Matlab-GUI platform for the proposed system is carried out and the reliability of the system is introduced. The proposed system is shown to be a simple, cost effective and flexible that making it a suitable and a good candidate for the smart home future. I. INTRODUCTION ecently, man's work and life are increasingly tight with the rapid growth in communications and information technology. The informationized society has changed human being's way of life as well as challenged the traditional residence. Followed by the rapid economic expansion, living standard keeps raising up day by day that people have a higher requirement for dwelling functions. The intellectualized society brings diversified information where safe, economic, comfortable and convenient life has become the ideal for every modern family [1].

The idea of Smart Grid has started to evolve more rapidly with the enhancement in Communication Technologies. Two way communication is a key aspect in realizing Smart Grids and is easily possible with the help of modern day advancements in both wired and wireless communication technologies. This paper discusses some of the major communication technologies which include IEEE specified ZigBee, WiMAX and Wireless LAN (Wi-Fi) technologies, GSM 3G/4G Cellular, DASH 7 and PLC (Power Line Communications), with special focus on their applications in Smart Grids. The Smart Grid environments and domains such as Home Area Automation, Substation Automation, Automated Metering Infrastructure, Vehicle-to-Grid Communications, etc. are considered as priority areas for developing smarter grids. The advancements, challenges and the opportunities present in these priority areas are discussed in this paper. & 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Internet evolution has been recently related with some aspect of user empowerment, mostly in terms of content distribution, and this has been ultimately accelerated by the fast-paced introduction and expansion of wireless technologies. Hence, the Internet should start to be seen as a communications infrastructure able to support the integration of a myriad of embedded and personal wireless objects. This way a future Internet will support the interaction between users’ social, physical and virtual sphere. This position paper aims to raise some discussion about the technology required to ensure an efficient interaction between the physical, social and virtual worlds by extending the Internet by means of interconnected objects. Namely, it is argued that an efficient interaction between the physical, social and virtual worlds requires the development of a data-centric architecture based on IP-driven opportunisitc networking able to make useful data available to people when and where they really need it, augmenting their social and environmental awareness.

BACKGROUND
Mobile phone sensors can be used to develop context-aware systems that automatically detect when patients require assistance. Mobile phones can also provide ecological momentary interventions that deliver tailored assistance during problematic situations. However, such approaches have not yet been used to treat major depressive disorder.

OBJECTIVE
The purpose of this study was to investigate the technical feasibility, functional reliability, and patient satisfaction with Mobilyze!, a mobile phone- and Internet-based intervention including ecological momentary intervention and context sensing.

METHODS
We developed a mobile phone application and supporting architecture, in which machine learning models (ie, learners) predicted patients' mood, emotions, cognitive/motivational states, activities, environmental context, and social context based on at least 38 concurrent phone sensor values (eg, global positioning system, ambient light, recent calls). The website included feedback graphs illustrating correlations between patients' self-reported states, as well as didactics and tools teaching patients behavioral activation concepts. Brief telephone calls and emails with a clinician were used to promote adherence. We enrolled 8 adults with major depressive disorder in a single-arm pilot study to receive Mobilyze! and complete clinical assessments for 8 weeks.

RESULTS
Promising accuracy rates (60% to 91%) were achieved by learners predicting categorical contextual states (eg, location). For states rated on scales (eg, mood), predictive capability was poor. Participants were satisfied with the phone application and improved significantly on self-reported depressive symptoms (beta(week) = -.82, P < .001, per-protocol Cohen d = 3.43) and interview measures of depressive symptoms (beta(week) = -.81, P < .001, per-protocol Cohen d = 3.55). Participants also became less likely to meet criteria for major depressive disorder diagnosis (b(week) = -.65, P = .03, per-protocol remission rate = 85.71%). Comorbid anxiety symptoms also decreased (beta(week) = -.71, P < .001, per-protocol Cohen d = 2.58).

CONCLUSIONS
Mobilyze! is a scalable, feasible intervention with preliminary evidence of efficacy. To our knowledge, it is the first ecological momentary intervention for unipolar depression, as well as one of the first attempts to use context sensing to identify mental health-related states. Several lessons learned regarding technical functionality, data mining, and software development process are discussed.

TRIAL REGISTRATION
Clinicaltrials.gov NCT01107041; http://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT01107041 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/60CVjPH0n).

In this paper, we introduce an ECG measurement, analysis and transmission system which uses a mobile phone as a base station. The system is based on a small-sized mobile ECG recording device which sends measurement data wirelessly to the mobile phone. In the mobile phone the received data is analyzed and if abnormalities are found part of the measurement data is sent to a server for the use of medical personnel. The prototype of the system was made with a portable ECG monitor and Nokia 6681 mobile phone. The results show that modern smart phones are indeed capable for this kind of tasks. Thus, with their good networking and data processing capabilities, they are a potential part of the future wireless health care systems.

Patient tracking is an important component toward creating smart cities. In this demo we use Bluetooth Low Energy beacons and single board computers to track patients in the emerging field of smart care facilities. Our model utilizes a fixed scanner moving transmitter method for wireless tracking of patients through the facility. The data collected by all scanners is stored within a central database that is designed to be efficiently queried. We show how inexpensive components in conjunction with free open source software can be used to implement a patient tracking system. We focus on the pipeline between acquisition and display of the location data. Additionally, we also discuss the manipulation of the data required for usability, and optional filtering operations that improve accuracy.

Recently, several researches concerning with smart and connected communities have been studied. Soon the 4G / 5G technology becomes popular, and cellular base stations will be located densely in the urban space. They may offer intelligent services for autonomous driving, urban environment improvement, disaster mitigation, elderly/disabled people support and so on. Such infrastructure might function as edge servers for disaster support base. In this paper, we enumerate several research issues to be developed in the ICDCS community in the next decade in order for building safe, smart cities resistant to disasters. In particular, we focus on (A) up-to-date urban crowd mobility prediction and (B) resilient disaster information gathering mechanisms based on the edge computing paradigm. We investigate recent related works and projects, and introduce our on-going research work and insight for disaster mitigation.


Question: Influence of wireless communication technologies on elderly healthcare: The case of smart homes in Australia.

This paper presents an innovative approach to activity recognition in home environments using minimally intrusive sensors. The system utilizes compact, state-change sensors that can be easily and unobtrusively installed throughout a home, offering a more privacy-preserving alternative to surveillance technologies like cameras and microphones. This sensing solution is designed to be user-friendly, allowing for quick deployment without the need for technical expertise. Unlike previous research, the system has been tested in real-world residential settings with non-researcher residents. Initial findings on a limited dataset indicate that the system can effectively detect critical activities relevant to healthcare professionals, such as toileting, bathing, and grooming, with accuracy rates spanning from 25% to 89%, contingent on the specific evaluation metrics applied. This technology holds significant potential for enhancing elder care through continuous monitoring in a smart home setting, particularly in the Australian context where there is a growing emphasis on aging in place.

An overview of the key challenges facing the practice of medicine today is presented along with the need for technological solutions that can "prevent" problems. Then, the development of the Wearable Motherboard/spl trade/ (Smart Shirt) as a platform for sensors and monitoring devices that can unobtrusively monitor the health and well being of individuals (directly and/or remotely) is described. This is followed by a discussion of the applications and impact of this technology in the continuum of life-from preventing SIDS to facilitating independent living for senior citizens. Finally, the future advancements in the area of wearable, yet comfortable, systems that can continue the transformation of healthcare - all aimed at enhancing the quality of life for humans - are presented.

The paper describes the mobile information and communication aspects of a next generation train maintenance and diagnosis system, discusses the working prototype features, and research results. Wearable/ Mobile computers combined with the wireless technology improve efficiency and accuracy of the maintenance work. This technology enables maintenance personnel at the site to communicate with a remote helpdesk / expertise center through digital data, audio, and image.

Wireless, remote patient monitoring system and control using feedback and GSM technology is used to monitor the different parameters of an ICU patient remotely and also control over medicine dosage is provided. Measurement of vital parameters can be done remotely and under risk developing situation can be conveyed to the physician with alarm triggering systems in order to initiate the proper control actions. In the implemented system a reliable and efficient real time remote patient monitoring system that can play a vital role in providing better patient care is developed. This system enables expert doctors to monitor vital parameters viz body temperature, blood pressure and heart rate of patients in remote areas of hospital as well as he can monitor the patient when he is out of the premises. The system in addition also provides a feedback to control the dosage of medicine to the patient as guided by the doctor remotely, in response to the health condition message received by the doctor. Mobile phones transfer measured parameters via SMS to clinicians for further analysis or diagnosis. The timely manner of conveying the real time monitored parameter to the doctor and control action taken by him is given high priority which is very much needed and which is the uniqueness of the developed system. The system even facilitates the doctor to monitor the patient's previous history from the data in memory inbuilt in the monitoring device. Also data can be sent to several doctors incase a doctor fails to respond urgently.

Smart Cities gained importance as a means of making ICT enabled services and applications available to the citizens, companies and authorities that are part of a city's system. It aims at increasing citizens' quality of life, and improving the efficiency and quality of the services provided by governing entities and businesses. This perspective requires an integrated vision of a city and of its infrastructures, in all its components. A Smart City can be taken according to six characteristics: All these domains raise new challenges in security and privacy, since users implicitly expect systems to be secure and privacy-preserving. One of the critical elements is which role(s) the city will take up as an actor within an increasingly complex value network. New players enter the market, actors shift their business strategies, roles change, different types of platforms emerge and vie for market dominance, technological developments create new threats and opportunities, etc. An element related to the trend of platformisation is cloud computing, which is increasingly helping the private sector to reduce cost, increase efficiency, and work smarter. One particular challenge relates to open data business models. Activities necessary for Public Sector Information provision can be identified. The development of efficient and effective e-government is a prerequisite. Transnational authentication systems for citizens and businesses, agreed frameworks for data privacy, and the sharing and collection of individual and business data, are key. Smart Cities need to be able to integrate themselves into national, regional and international infrastructures. Although the implementation aspects depend strongly on the authorities of these infrastructures, European wide recommendations and directives will definitely contribute to accelerate the deployment of Smart Cities. Health, inclusion and assisted living will play an essential role, since the demand for related services is rising, because ageing is changing disease composition. Requirements address a number of technologies, beyond the ones related to mobile and fixed networks. An integrated perspective on healthcare solutions for the near-to long-term can be foreseen, bridging a direct gap in between the health area and the technological development of communications (radio and network components). The needs for mobility in urban areas result into a number of problems, such as traffic congestion and energy consumption, which can be alleviated by exploiting Intelligent Transportation Systems and further adoption of vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication networks. The information being managed in this area can be relevant to other domains, which increases its potential. An effective deployment …

This paper proposes architecture for an early warning floods system to alert public against flood disasters. An effective early warning system must be developed with linkages between four elements, which are accurate data collection to undertake risk assessments, development of hazard monitoring services, communication on risk related information and existence of community response capabilities. This project focuses on monitoring water level remotely using wireless sensor network. The project also utilizes Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) and short message service (SMS) to relay data from sensors to computers or directly alert the respective victim's through their mobile phone. It is hope that the proposed architecture can be further develop into a functioning system, which would be beneficial to the community and act as a precautionary action to save lives in the case of flood disaster.

The potential of the artificial intelligence, data mining and the so-called Big Data to build solutions based on the understanding of human behaviours is being extended with the capabilities of the Future Internet and the Internet of Things (IoT). The described potential of data and networks have been analyzed by the complex network theory, offering a specialized branch, the defined as Human Dynamics. The goal with the Internet of Things in the social area is to describe in real-time the human behaviours and activities. These goals are starting to be feasible through the quantity of data provided by the personal devices such as smart phone, and the smart environments such as Smart cities that makes more intelligent the environment and offer a smart space that sense our movements, actions, and the evolution of the ecosystem. This work analyses the ecosystem defined through the triangle formed by Big Data, Smart Cities and Personal/Wearable Computing to determinate human behaviours and human dynamics. For this purpose, the life-cycle of human dynamics determinations in Smart Cities have been analysed in order to determinate the current status of the technology, challenges, and opportunities.

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects or things embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enables these objects to collect and exchange data. The Internet of Things allows objects to be sensed and controlled remotely across existing network infrastructure. The IoT is enabled by the latest developments in RFID, smart sensors, communication technologies, and Internet protocols. The basic premise is to have smart sensors collaborate directly without human involvement to deliver a new class of applications. The current revolution in Internet, mobile, and machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies can be seen as the first phase of the IoT. In the coming years, the IoT is expected to bridge diverse technologies to enable new applications by connecting physical objects together in support of intelligent decision making. Smart healthcare plays a significant role in healthcare applications through embedding sensors and actuators in patients and their medicine for monitoring and tracking purposes. The IoT is used by clinical care to monitor physiological statuses of patients through sensors by collecting and analyzing their information and then sending analyzed patient’s data remotely to processing centers to make suitable actions. Not only for patients, it also useful for normal people to check the health status by using wearable devices with sensors.

With the support of mobile cloud computing, wireless body area networks can be significantly enhanced for massive deployment of pervasive healthcare applications. However, several technical issues and challenges are associated with the integration of WBANs and MCC. In this article, we study a cloud-enabled WBAN architecture and its applications in pervasive healthcare systems. We highlight the methodologies for transmitting vital sign data to the cloud by using energy-efficient routing, cloud resource allocation, semantic interactions, and data security mechanisms.

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) is a collection of wireless sensor nodes which can be placed within the body or outside the body of a human or a living person which in result observes or monitors the functionality and adjoining situations of the body. Utilizing a Wireless Body Area Network, the patient encounters a greater physical versatility and is never again constrained to remain in the hospital. As the Wireless Body Area Network sensor devices is being utilized for gathering the sensitive data and possibly will run into antagonistic situations, they require complicated and very secure security medium or structure to avoid the vitriolic communications within the system. These devices represent various security and privacy protection of touchy and private patient medical data. The medical records of patients are a significant and an unsolved situation due to which a changing or exploitation to the system is possible. In this research paper, we first present an overview of WBAN, how they utilized for healthcare monitoring, its architecture then highlight major security and privacy requirements and assaults at different network layer in a WBAN and we finally talk about various cryptographic algorithms and laws for providing solution of security and privacy in WBAN. Keywords—E-Health; privacy; security; wireless body area networks

In this paper we describe the design evolution of a novel technology that collects and displays presence information to be used in the homes of older adults. The first two iterations, the Ambient Plant and Presence Clock, were designed for higher socio-economic status (SES) older adults, whereas the Check-In Tree was designed for low SES older adults. We describe how feedback from older adult participants drove our design decisions, and give an in-depth account of how the Check-In Tree evolved from concept to a final design ready for in situ deployment.


Question: Using affordances as a framework for controlling robotic systems.

This study explores the integration of the concept of affordances into autonomous robot control and how findings from this field can contribute to the broader understanding of affordances. Specifically, we examine how a mobile robot, outfitted with a 3D laser scanner, can be trained to discern and utilize the traversability affordance for navigation within a cluttered environment filled with spheres, cylinders, and boxes. Our findings indicate that, following a learning phase, the robot can successfully navigate while avoiding non-traversable objects such as boxes and upright cylinders, as well as certain orientations of lying cylinders. Conversely, it is able to traverse over objects that offer the affordance of traversability, such as spheres and lying cylinders in orientations conducive to rolling, effectively moving them out of the way. We demonstrate that for each potential action, approximately 1% of the perceptual features are crucial in determining whether the action is afforded or not, and these features are typically located in specific regions of the range image. Both simulated and real-world robotic experiments were conducted to validate our approach, showcasing the robot's ability to apply the concept of affordances for improved navigation.

Interpretation of images and videos containing humans interacting with different objects is a daunting task. It involves understanding scene or event, analyzing human movements, recognizing manipulable objects, and observing the effect of the human movement on those objects. While each of these perceptual tasks can be conducted independently, recognition rate improves when interactions between them are considered. Motivated by psychological studies of human perception, we present a Bayesian approach which integrates various perceptual tasks involved in understanding human-object interactions. Previous approaches to object and action recognition rely on static shape or appearance feature matching and motion analysis, respectively. Our approach goes beyond these traditional approaches and applies spatial and functional constraints on each of the perceptual elements for coherent semantic interpretation. Such constraints allow us to recognize objects and actions when the appearances are not discriminative enough. We also demonstrate the use of such constraints in recognition of actions from static images without using any motion information.

Abstract. This research focuses on developing and testing the highlevel control of a novel eight DOF hybrid robot using a DaVinci master manipulator. The teleoperation control is formulated as weighted, multi objective constrained least square (LS) optimization problems one for the master controller and the other for the slave controller. This allows us to incorporate various virtual fixtures in our control algorithm as constraints of the LS problem based on the robot environment. Experimental validation to ensure position tracking and sufficient dexterity to perform suturing in confined spaces such as throat are presented.

To explore issues of developmental structure, physical embodiment, integration of multiple sensory and motor systems, and social interaction, we have constructed an upper-torso humanoid robot called Cog. The robot has twenty-one degrees of freedom and a variety of sensory systems, including visual, auditory, vestibular, kinesthetic, and tactile senses. This chapter gives a background on the methodology that we have used in our investigations, highlights the research issues that have been raised during this project, and provides a summary of both the current state of the project and our long-term goals. We report on a variety of implemented visual-motor routines (smooth-pursuit tracking, saccades, binocular vergence, and vestibular-ocular and opto-kinetic reflexes), orientation behaviors, motor control techniques, and social behaviors (pointing to a visual target, recognizing joint attention through face and eye finding, imitation of head nods, and regulating interaction through expressive feedback). We further outline a number of areas for future research that will be necessary to build a complete embodied system.

The term 'synergy' - from the Greek synergia - means 'working together'. The concept of multiple elements working together towards a common goal has been extensively used in neuroscience to develop theoretical frameworks, experimental approaches, and analytical techniques to understand neural control of movement, and for applications for neuro-rehabilitation. In the past decade, roboticists have successfully applied the framework of synergies to create novel design and control concepts for artificial hands, i.e., robotic hands and prostheses. At the same time, robotic research on the sensorimotor integration underlying the control and sensing of artificial hands has inspired new research approaches in neuroscience, and has provided useful instruments for novel experiments. The ambitious goal of integrating expertise and research approaches in robotics and neuroscience to study the properties and applications of the concept of synergies is generating a number of multidisciplinary cooperative projects, among which the recently finished 4-year European project "The Hand Embodied" (THE). This paper reviews the main insights provided by this framework. Specifically, we provide an overview of neuroscientific bases of hand synergies and introduce how robotics has leveraged the insights from neuroscience for innovative design in hardware and controllers for biomedical engineering applications, including myoelectric hand prostheses, devices for haptics research, and wearable sensing of human hand kinematics. The review also emphasizes how this multidisciplinary collaboration has generated new ways to conceptualize a synergy-based approach for robotics, and provides guidelines and principles for analyzing human behavior and synthesizing artificial robotic systems based on a theory of synergies.

In this paper, we have developed a method to tele-control a robot arm to imitate human writing skills using electromyography (EMG) signals. The control method is implemented on the Baxter® robot with a brush attached on the endpoint of its arm to imitate human writing skills, and a MYO sensor is used to measure the surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals generated by contractions of human muscles involved in writing tasks. A haptic device Sensable® Omni is used to control the motion of the Baxter® robot arm, and V-Rep® is employed to simulate the movement of the arm and to calculate the inverse kinematic of Baxter® robot arm. All the communications for Baxter® robot, V-Rep simulator, Omni device and MYO are integrated in MATLAB®/Simulink®. The main test is to make the Baxter® arm following the movement of a human subject when writing with Omni stylus, and the EMG signals are processed using low pass filter and moving average technique to extract the smoothed envelope which is utilised to control the variation of position instead of variation of force along the vertical Z axis, so when the operator writes with force variations, the Baxter® can draw lines with variable thickness. This imitation system is successfully tested to make the Baxter® arm to follow the writing movement of the operator's hand and would have potential applications in more complicated human robot teleoperation tasks such as tele-rehabilitation and tele-surgery.

Effective physical Human-Robot Interaction (pHRI) needs to account for variable human dynamics and also predict human intent. Recently, there has been a lot of progress in adaptive impedance and admittance control for human-robot interaction. Not as many contributions have been reported on online adaptation schemes that can accommodate users with varying physical strength and skill level during interaction with a robot. The goal of this paper is to present and evaluate a novel adaptive admittance controller that can incorporate human intent, nominal task models, as well as variations in the robot dynamics. An outer-loop controller is developed using an ARMA model which is tuned using an adaptive inverse control technique. An inner-loop neuroadaptive controller linearizes the robot dynamics. Working in conjunction and online, this two-loop technique offers an elegant way to decouple the pHRI problem. Experimental results are presented comparing the performance of different types of admittance controllers. The results show that efficient online adaptation of the robot admittance model for different human subjects can be achieved. Specifically, the adaptive admittance controller reduces jerk which results in a smooth human-robot interaction.

The representation of the knowledge needed by a robot to perform complex tasks is restricted by the limitations of perception. One possible way of overcoming this situation and designing “knowledgeable” robots is to rely on the interaction with the user. We propose a multi-modal interaction framework that allows to effectively acquire knowledge about the environment where the robot operates. In particular, in this paper we present a rich representation framework that can be automatically built from the metric map annotated with the indications provided by the user. Such a representation, allows then the robot to ground complex referential expressions for motion commands and to devise topological navigation plans to achieve the target locations.

In this paper we will address the problem of planning optimal grasps. Two general optimality criteria, that consider the total finger force and the maximum finger force will be introduced and discussed. Moreover their formalization, using various metrics on a space of generalized forces, will be detailed. The geometric interpretation of the two criteria will lead to an efficient planning algorithm. An example of its use in a robotic environment equipped with two-jaw and three-jaw grippers will also be shown.

We have developed the exoskeletal robotics suite HAL (Hybrid Assisitve Leg) which is integrated with human and assists suitable power for ‘lower limb of people with goit disorder. This study proposes the method of assist motion and ossist torque to realize a power assist corresponding to the operator’s intention. In the method of a,ssist motion, we adopted Phase Sequence control which generates a series of assist m,otions hi/ transiti.n,q .some simple basic motions called Phase. w e used the feedback controller to adjust the assist torque to m.ointain myoelectricity signals which were generated while performing the power assist uiolking. The experiment xsults showed the effective power assist according to operator’s intention b y using these control methods.

In this paper, we demonstrate an underactuated finger design and grasping method for precision grasping and manipulation of small objects. Taking inspiration from the human grasping strategy for picking up objects from a flat surface, we introduce the flip-and-pinch task, in which the hand picks up a thin object by flipping it into a stable configuration between two fingers. Despite the fact that finger motions are not fully constrained by the hand actuators, we demonstrate that the hand and fingers can interact with the table surface to produce a set of constraints that result in a repeatable quasi-static motion trajectory. Even when utilizing only open-loop kinematic playback, this approach is shown to be robust to variation in object size and hand position. Variation of up to 20° in orientation and 10 mm in hand height still result in experimental success rates of 80% or higher. These results suggest that the advantages of underactuated, adaptive robot hands can be carried over from basic grasping tasks to more dexterous tasks.


Question: Affordances serving as a framework for the control of robots.

This study investigates the neural underpinnings of action recognition within the premotor cortex of macaque monkeys, focusing on the rostral portion of inferior area 6 (area F5). The research involved the monitoring of electrical activity in 532 neurons and revealed a novel subset of F5 neurons, termed "mirror neurons" (n = 92), which displayed unique activity patterns. These mirror neurons exhibited activation not only when the monkey executed specific hand or mouth movements but also when the monkey observed similar actions performed by the experimenter. The visual activation of mirror neurons was contingent upon the interaction between the action's agent and its object; neither the agent nor the object alone was sufficient to trigger the response. Hands and mouths were found to be the most potent agents. Among the actions that most frequently elicited responses from mirror neurons were grasping, manipulating, and placing. A clear correspondence was observed between the visual action and the motor response coded by 92% of mirror neurons, with a strict congruence noted in around 30% of these neurons, where the observed and executed actions matched in terms of both general action and the specific manner of execution. The study concludes by positing that mirror neurons constitute a system for aligning observation and execution of motor actions. This system is hypothesized to play a crucial role in action recognition. Given the proposed homology between F5 and human Broca's region, the authors suggest that a similar matching system exists in humans, potentially involved in recognizing not only actions but also phonetic gestures.

A wheelchair-mounted robotic arm (WMRA) system was designed and built to meet the needs of mobilityimpaired persons with limitations of upper extremities, and to exceed the capabilities of current devices of this type. The control of this 9-degree-of-freedom system expands upon conventional control methods and combines the 7-DoF robotic arm control with the 2-degree-of-freedom power wheelchair control. The 3- degrees of redundancy are optimized to effectively perform activities of daily living and overcome singularities, joint limits and some workspace limitations. The control system is designed for teleoperated or autonomous coordinated Cartesian control, which offers expandability for future research. A P300 Brain Computer Interface (BCI), the BCI2000, was implemented to control the WMRA system. The control is done by recording and analysing the brain activity through an electrode cap while providing visual stimulation to the user via a visual matrix. The visual matrix contains a symbolic or an alphabetic array corresponding to the motion of the WMRA. By recognizing online and in real-time, which element in the matrix elicited a P300, the BCI system can identify which element the user chose to communicate. The chosen element is then communicated to the controller of the WMRA system. The speed and accuracy of the BCI system was tested. This paper gives details of the WMRA's integration with the BCI2000 and documents the experimental results of the BCI and the WMRA in simulation.

Kirsh, D., Today the earwig, tomorrow man?, Artificial Intelligence 47 (1991) 161-184. A startling amount of intelligent activity can be controlled without reasoning or thought. By tuning the perceptual system to task relevant properties a creature can cope with relatively sophisticated environments without concepts. There is a limit, however, to how far a creature without concepts can go. Rod Brooks, like many ecologically oriented scientists, argues that the vast majority of intelligent behaviour is concept-free. To evaluate this position I consider what special benefits accrue to concept-using creatures. Concepts are either necessary for certain types of perception, learning, and control, or they make those processes computationally simpler. Once a creature has concepts its capacities are vastly multiplied.

Telemanipulation (master-slave operation) was developed in order to replace human being in hazardous environment, with using a slave device (e.g. robot). In this paper many kind of master devices are studied, for the precise control. Remote control needs much information about remote environment for good and safe human-machine interaction. Existing master devices with vision system or audio feedback lacks most of such information, therefor force feedback, called haptics become significant recently. In this paper we propose a new concept of force feedback. This system can overcome the bottlenecks of other feedback system in a user friendly way. Force sensor and laser distance sensor communicates the information from the gripper's status to the teleoperator by using force feedback module on a glove. Pneumatic pressure gives the operator distance information, while a Magnetorheological Fluid (MR-Fluid) based actuator presents the gripper's force. The experiment result shows the possibility of usage of such force feedback glove in combination with a robotic arm.

In line with the sensorimotor contingency theory, we investigate the problem of the perception of space from a fundamental sensorimotor perspective. Despite its pervasive nature in our perception of the world, the origin of the concept of space remains largely mysterious. For example in the context of artificial perception, this issue is usually circumvented by having engineers pre-define the spatial structure of the problem the agent has to face. We here show that the structure of space can be autonomously discovered by a naive agent in the form of sensorimotor regularities, that correspond to so called compensable sensory experiences: these are experiences that can be generated either by the agent or its environment. By detecting such compensable experiences the agent can infer the topological and metric structure of the external space in which its body is moving. We propose a theoretical description of the nature of these regularities and illustrate the approach on a simulated robotic arm equipped with an eye-like sensor, and which interacts with an object. Finally we show how these regularities can be used to build an internal representation of the sensor's external spatial configuration.

Dante II is a unique walking robot that provides important insight into high-mobility robotic locomotion and remote robotic exploration. Dante II’s uniqueness stems from its combined legged and rappelling mobility system, its scanning-laser rangefinder, and its multilevel control scheme. In 1994 Dante II was deployed and successfully tested in a remote Alaskan volcano, as a demonstration of the fieldworthiness of these technologies. For more than five days the robot explored alone in the volcano crater using a combination of supervised autonomous control and teleoperated control. Human operators were located 120 km distant during the mission. This article first describes in detail the robot, support systems, control techniques, and user interfaces. We then describe results from the battery of field tests leading up to and including the volcanic mission. Finally, we put forth important lessons which comprise the legacy of this project. We show that framewalkers are appropriate for rappelling in severe terrain, though tether systems have limitations. We also discuss the importance of future “autonomous” systems to realize when they require human support rather than relying on humans for constant oversight. KEY WORDS—rappelling, walking robot, supervised autonomy, behavior-based control, terrain visualization, volcano exploration

The recent introduction of robots to everyday scenarios has revealed new opportunities for collaboration and social interaction between robots and people. However, high level interaction will require semantic understanding of the environment. In this paper, we advocate that co-existence of assistive robots and humans can be leveraged to enhance the semantic understanding of the shared environment, and improve situation awareness. We propose a probabilistic framework that combines human activity sensor data generated by smart wearables with low level localisation data generated by robots. Based on this low level information and leveraging colocation events between a user and a robot, it can reason about semantic information and track humans and robots across different rooms. The proposed system relies on two-way sharing of information between the robot and the user. In the first phase, user activities indicative of room utility are inferred from consumer wearable devices and shared with the robot, enabling it to gradually build a semantic map of the environment. This will enable natural language interaction and high-level tasks for both assistive and co-working robots. In a second phase, via colocation events, the robot is able to share semantic information with the user, by labelling raw user data with semantic information about room type. Over time, the labelled data is used for training an Hidden Markov Model for room-level localisation, effectively making the user independent from the robot.

Architectures form the backbone of complete robotic systems. The right choice of architecture can go a long way in facilitating the specification, implementation and validation of robotic systems. Conversely, of course, the wrong choice can make one's life miserable. We present some of the needs of robotic systems, describe some general classes of robot architectures, and discuss how different architectural styles can help in addressing those needs. The paper, like the field itself, is somewhat preliminary, yet it is hoped that it will provide guidance for those who use, or develop, robot architectures.

In this paper, we present an efficient 3D object recognition and pose estimation approach for grasping procedures in cluttered and occluded environments. In contrast to common appearance-based approaches, we rely solely on 3D geometry information. Our method is based on a robust geometric descriptor, a hashing technique and an efficient, localized RANSAC-like sampling strategy. We assume that each object is represented by a model consisting of a set of points with corresponding surface normals. Our method simultaneously recognizes multiple model instances and estimates their pose in the scene. A variety of tests shows that the proposed method performs well on noisy, cluttered and unsegmented range scans in which only small parts of the objects are visible. The main procedure of the algorithm has a linear time complexity resulting in a high recognition speed which allows a direct integration of the method into a continuous manipulation task. The experimental validation with a 7-degrees-of-freedom Cartesian impedance controlled robot shows how the method can be used for grasping objects from a complex random stack. This application demonstrates how the integration of computer vision and softrobotics leads to a robotic system capable of acting in unstructured and occluded environments.

We cast the partially observable control problem as a fully observable underactuated stochastic control problem in belief space and apply standard planning and control techniques. One of the difficulties of belief space planning is modeling the stochastic dynamics resulting from unknown future observations . The core of our proposal is to define deterministic beliefsystem dynamics based on an assumption that the maximum likelihood observation (calculated just prior to the observation) is always obtained. The stochastic effects of future observation s are modeled as Gaussian noise. Given this model of the dynamics, two planning and control methods are applied. In the first, linear quadratic regulation (LQR) is applied to generate policies in the belief space. This approach is shown to be optimal for linearGaussian systems. In the second, a planner is used to find locally optimal plans in the belief space. We propose a replanning approach that is shown to converge to the belief space goal in a finite number of replanning steps. These approaches are characterized in the context of a simple nonlinear manipulation problem where a planar robot simultaneously locates and grasps an object.

The KUKA Control Toolbox (KCT) is a collection of MATLAB functions developed at the University of Siena, for motion control of KUKA robot manipulators. The toolbox, which is compatible with all 6 DOF small and low-payload KUKA robots that use the Eth.RSIXML, runs on a remote computer connected with the KUKA controller via TCP/IP. KCT includes more than 40 functions, spanning operations such as forward and inverse kinematics computation, point-to-point joint and Cartesian control, trajectory generation, graphical display, 3-D animation and diagnostics. Applicative examples show the flexibility of KCT and its easy interfacing with other toolboxes and external devices.