Gwm Matthias Rauterberg

Activity monitoring for multi-inhabitant smart homes

Activity recognition and monitoring play important roles in smart home systems, which rely on perceiving and understanding inhabitants’ behavior to generate a response. Applications that require such pattern recognition include alarms to detect anomalies and personalized home automation systems (where automatic lighting, heating, or security are tailored to the habits of the inhabitants). To observe activity in an environment by the least intrusive means, we considered the use of ambient sensors, rather than cameras or wearables. Most existing work in this area focuses on environments with single inhabitants,1 or on laboratories or temporarily occupied spaces,2 and is conducted using high-density motion sensors.3 We aim to provide a solution that includes tools for tracking, recognizing, and monitoring the day-to-day activities of inhabitant(s), but which is also suitable for real-life settings, under a strict policy that we discuss and agree with the inhabitants. Our testbed was a 260m2 home in Carinthia, Austria, based on a framework similar to that of the Casa Vecchia project.4 A family of four inhabited the house: parents, aged 46 and 45, and two children, aged 10 and 13, and there were also regular visitors. Around the house we installed passive IR motion sensors, magnetic contacts for doors and cupboards, in-between switches, and window blind actuators (see Figure 1). All the devices (except the blind actuators) generated binary values (on/off, open/closed) when triggered by their interactions with the inhabitants. For privacy reasons, we were unable to use video cameras for observation, and for comfort and practicality we selected not to use identification devices (radio-frequency identification bracelets, for example). Therefore, to recognize and track movement by each person as they move around the space, we Figure 1. Left: Floor plan of the testbed house and sensor placements for the ambient sensor network. Right: Examples of the sensors: a motion sensor on the wall (top), a magnetic contact on a shower door (center), and an in-between switch for the TV (bottom).

Total Design of Active Neck Support System for Economy Class Aircraft Seat

Travel by air with long hours will create discomfort feeling for aircraft passenger especially economy class aircraft passenger. Long hour air travel will create physiological stress on aircraft passenger. It may due to seat space limitation, noise, vibration, cabin humidity as well as seat comfort. Seat comfort is a subjective feeling that related to psychological aspect of aircraft passenger. The current aircraft passenger seat is equipped with a passive function where the passenger themselves needs to adjust the seat for comfort seating position. The aircraft passenger will not able to adjust the seat when the aircraft passenger is in the low activity condition. The active seat support system was developed to support the aircraft passenger actively. The first prototype of active seat support system is focus on neck section. The head position of the aircraft seat was embedded with the system to detect the head position of the passenger. During the development of the active seat support system, total design technique was used. Five conceptual designs were generated for selection. To determine the final design of active neck support system, the matrix evaluation method was used. The weight of the concept was obtained through weight analysis.

An expert fault diagnosis system for vehicle air conditioning product development

The paper describes the development of the vehicle air-conditioning fault diagnosis system in automotive industries with expert system shell. The main aim of the research is to diagnose the problem of new vehicle air-conditioning system development process and select the most suitable solution to the problems. In the vehicle air-conditioning manufacturing industry, process can be very costly where an expert and experience personnel needed in certain circumstances. The expert of in the industry will retire or resign from time to time. When the expert is absent, their experience and knowledge is difficult to retrieve or lost forever. Expert system is a convenient method to replace expert. By replacing the expert with expert system, the accuracy of the processes will be increased compared to the conventional way. Therefore, the quality of product services that are produced will be finer and better. The inputs for the fault diagnosis are based on design data and experience of the engineer.

Toward a domestic system to assist people with Parkinson's

A new home tracking system based on a Microsoft Kinect sensor will help patients with the symptom of ‘freezing of gait.’

Seat discomfort of Dutch truck driver seat : a survey study and analysis

This paper described a survey that was designed to examine the seat discomfort and travel time factors for Dutch truck driver seat to reduce discomfort. Truck drivers were at risk of body discomfort for long hours sitting, and experience significant discomfort at different body parts. For the truck seat questionnaire, 217 Dutch truck drivers completed self administered questionnaires. Statistical methods were applied to analyze the surveys. Body discomfort level after one hour and five hours were studied. The outcomes from the analytical results were important and required more attention to reduce the body discomfort for long hour sitting.

An Expert Machine Tools Selection System for Turning Operation

The turning machining process is an important process in the manufacturing industry. It is important to select the right tool for the turning process so that the manufacturing cost will be decreased. The main objective of this research is to select the most suitable machine tools with respect to user input requirement. The selection criteria are based on rule based expert system and multi-criteria weighted average method. The developed system consists of Knowledge Acquisition Module, Machine Tool Selection Module, User Interface Module and Help Module. The system capable of selecting the most suitable machine along with its full specification and ranks the machines based on criteria weighted. The main benefits from using the system is to reduce the complexity in the decision making for selecting the most appropriate machine tools to suit one requirement in the turning process for manufacturing industry.

A rule-based industrial boiler selection system

Boiler is a device used for generating the steam for power generation, process use or heating, and hot water for heating purposes. Steam boiler consists of the containing vessel and convection heating surfaces only, whereas a steam generator covers the whole unit, encompassing water wall tubes, super heaters, air heaters and economizers. The selection of the boiler is very important to the industry for conducting the operation system successfully. The selection criteria are based on rule based expert system and multi-criteria weighted average method. The developed system consists of Knowledge Acquisition Module, Boiler Selection Module, User Interface Module and Help Module. The system capable of selecting the suitable boiler based on criteria weighted. The main benefits from using the system is to reduce the complexity in the decision making for selecting the most appropriate boiler to palm oil process plant.

Numerical Modeling of Air-Based Bus Seat

Travel with long hours will create discomfort feeling for passenger especially express bus passenger. Long hour travel will create physiological stress on passenger. It may due to seat space limitation, noise, vibration, seat hardness as well as seat comfort. Seat comfort is a subjective feeling that related to psychological aspect of passenger. In this project, the bus passenger seat is integrated with air-based and gel-based material. In Malaysia, most of the express coaches are using polyurethane foam based cushion in the seat padding. This type of the seat padding may cause a bus passenger who sit for long journey will feel uncomfortable and fatigue. There are two main causes which lead to seating discomfort which is vibration and pressure distribution on the seat. The new design a bus passenger seat is using air-based cushion to improve the seating comfort. The air-based seat was validated by using MatLab SimuLINK software. In the model validation process, the parameters of air cell height gave effect on the pressure change rate of air cushion model. The comfortable level of the air cushion could be improved by reducing the pressure change rate and cell height.

Measuring archetypal experiences with physiological sensors

The instincts and innate behaviors that form the collective unconscious can be recognized by a computer using physiological sensors.

Adaptive Body Support System for Aircraft Seat

The development of new technology enables the comfort service becoming an important requirement in the air travel industry. Long haul air travel may cause different physiological and psychological discomfort of aircraft passenger. Most of the aircraft company treats the passenger comfort as a main priority for the user’s acceptance of their airline. In order to improve the aircraft passenger body comfort during long haul air travel, an adaptive body support system was developed and embedded in the economy class aircraft seat. In this paper, we describe the development of adaptive body support system.