Arturo C. Rodríguez

An Interactive Fuzzy Inference System for Teletherapy of Older People

Abstract The progressive aging of the population in developed countries is becoming a problem for healthcare systems, which must invest ever higher sums in caring for their older citizens. One of the most important issues in this area involves the physical and cognitive problems associated with growing old. In order to reduce the effect of these problems, gerontechnology has emerged as one of the most promising alternatives, especially in the field of the telerehabilitation systems developed to date. However, most of these systems do not offer therapists the facilities to design therapies adapted to individual patients. This paper proposes a novel system that supplies this need and enables therapists to create bespoke motor therapies as state diagrams and manage them efficiently in a collaborative setting. The proposed system is equipped with a fuzzy-based decision-making component that therapists can use to control transitioning between states according to variables such as fatigue and performance. Therefore, the system makes it feasible to provide older patients with the treatment they need in their own homes while its effectiveness is controlled by a Fuzzy Inference System.

A Multi-Agent System in Ambient Intelligence for the Physical Rehabilitation of Older People

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is a very active topic of research that is gaining more and more attention because of its characteristics, transparency and intelligence. Older people is one of the collectives that can take advantage of the use of AmI systems because, thanks to these characteristics, AmI systems can focus on older adults’ real needs so that they satisfy one of their main motivations to adapt technological innovations: perceived benefits.And, perhaps, everything related to healthcare and home care is perceived by them as both valuable and beneficial. In this paper, it is presented the Multi-Agent architecture (MAS) of a healthcare AmI system to treat older people’ motor impairment problems by using specific devices to control the patient’s movements. In this way, the natural relationship between AmI and MAS is being widely exploited. AmI proposes the development of context-aware systems that integrate different devices to recognize the context and act accordingly. Agents provide an effective way to develop such systems since agents are reactive, proactive and exhibit an intelligent and autonomous behavior. One of the main differences of our system is that it provides therapist with support to design new therapies, to adapt them to each specific person and to control their execution instead of using a fixed set of exercises.

A Multi-Agent System for Acquired Brain Injury rehabilitation in Ambient Intelligence environments

Abstract Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) is becoming an epidemic problem in our society, especially among older adults, being known as “the Silent Epidemic”. People with ABI demand solutions in research that offer them with a relearning process such that they can recover not only their physical skills but also their cognitive abilities. In this context, the inherent characteristics of Ambient Intelligence (AmI), transparency and intelligence, have turned it into one of the best approaches to square up to the impairment that ABI can cause. As AmI proposes the development of context-aware systems that integrate different devices to recognize the context and act accordingly, these systems can react promptly to the needs of people with ABI while they carry out their rehabilitation process. Moreover, the exploitation of a Multi-Agent architecture emerges as a natural solution to develop AmI systems, since agents are reactive, proactive and exhibit an intelligent and autonomous behavior. Therefore, in this paper, a Multi-Agent architecture (MAS) for healthcare AmI systems is presented. It contributes to treat people with ABI by using specific devices to control the patients movements and some physiological responses, such as the variation of the heart rate, during her rehabilitation process. In this way, the natural relationship between AmI and MAS is exploited. Finally, how this system is used to both design and execute therapies for people with ABI is presented.

A Collaborative System for Designing Tele-Therapies

Nowadays, the progressive aging of the population in developed countries is becoming a problem for health systems, which must invest more and more money to care their citizens. One of the most important issues are those derived of the physical and cognitive problems associated to the elderly. In order to reduce the effect of these problems, therapists have to design therapies that should be adapted to each person. To assist therapists in this design process, we have created a new system that allows them to create and manage specific therapies in a collaborative and efficiency way. In addition, the elderly can use this system to carry out their treatment at home thanks to the developed intelligent system that can control the effectiveness of their treatment.

Electromechanically coupled feedback loops for microsystems. Application to volatile organic compounds (VOC) sensors

This paper reports a novel design of an oscillator based on a silicon resonator with an electromechanical coupling using piezoelectric excitation. Lumped parameters modeling has been developed and employed to design the circuit and a version of the oscillator has been built and used in a VOC sensor. Extensive measurements with toluene have been carried out showing a sensitivity of 10 Hz/100 ppm over an oscillation frequency of 186.2 kHz and down to 25 ppm while keeping low both power consumption and cost.

An Alternative to W3C Task Model for Post-WIMP

The way people interact with computers has greatly evolved over the last years. Nowadays, WIMP (Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointer) systems are being replaced and Post-WIMP systems are becoming more and more popular as new interaction techniques, based on virtual reality, gesture recognition, wearable computers and so on, are becoming more usual for end users. The languages used to specify Post-WIMP systems have to change in order to cope with the increasing complexity of these systems. Therefore, this paper presents a Post-WIMP task meta-model, based on CSRML, as an alternative to the current W3C one. This proposal offers two main advantages regarding the specification of Post-WIMP systems. First, since the current W3C task meta-model does not have the required mechanisms to specify collaboration, a cornerstone of current Post-WIMP applications, several elements and relationships have been included in this new meta-model to specify it. Second, this new meta-model features the required expressiveness to represent the awareness information that Post-WIMP users should be provided with during the interaction with the system. A case study related to a Post-WIMP first person shooter game, based on a virtual reality interface, is used to show how this new task meta-model works.

A Bio-Inspired Model-Based Approach for Context-Aware Post-WIMP Tele-Rehabilitation

Tele-rehabilitation is one of the main domains where Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have been proven useful to move healthcare from care centers to patients’ home. Moreover, patients, especially those carrying out a physical therapy, cannot use a traditional Window, Icon, Menu, Pointer (WIMP) system, but they need to interact in a natural way, that is, there is a need to move from WIMP systems to Post-WIMP ones. Moreover, tele-rehabilitation systems should be developed following the context-aware approach, so that they are able to adapt to the patients’ context to provide them with usable and effective therapies. In this work a model-based approach is presented to assist stakeholders in the development of context-aware Post-WIMP tele-rehabilitation systems. It entails three different models: (i) a task model for designing the rehabilitation tasks; (ii) a context model to facilitate the adaptation of these tasks to the context; and (iii) a bio-inspired presentation model to specify thoroughly how such tasks should be performed by the patients. Our proposal overcomes one of the limitations of the model-based approach for the development of context-aware systems supporting the specification of non-functional requirements. Finally, a case study is used to illustrate how this proposal can be put into practice to design a real world rehabilitation task.

Towards an Architecture for a Scalable and Collaborative AmI Environment

In recent years, much research has focused its attention on Ambient Intelligence (AmI). Its potential applications to smart homes, hospitals, health monitoring or daily life assistance make this paradigm a very promising field of research that can have a great and positive impact in our lives. The combination of AmI environments and Multi-Agent Systems (MAS) has emerged as a perfect solution for the development of this kind of applications. However, there are many challenges to be addressed before such applications can be put into practice. In this paper, we propose an architecture based on MAS aimed to build rehabilitation systems for people with Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) and explain how this architecture has been applied for the development of Vi-SMARt: a system for defining and planning therapies for people with ABI, and to control and evaluate their rehabilitation process.

W3C Task Meta-model Limitations in Post-WIMP Applications

New technologies are giving rise to new interaction paradigms that go beyond the classic WIMP (Window, Icon, Menu and Pointing) interfaces. At the same time, theses new interfaces, called Post-WIMP need the modeling languages to be adapted in order to be suitable for a development process. In this paper, the W3C Task Meta-model is analyzed within a Post-WIMP system modeling and a new Task meta-model, based on CSRML, is proposed to tackle the shortcomings.

Micromachined silicon microstructures for gas sensors

Devices studied in this work consist of monocrystalline silicon micromachined cantilevers, obtained through the bulk micromachining of a BESOI (back etch silicon on insulator) wafer. Cantilevers are functionalized by means of a sensitive polymer layer. These devices have been employed in the detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) through different transduction principles. State-of-the-art sensitivities have been obtained.