Jânio M. Monteiro

Evaluation of the Human Factor in the Scheduling of Smart Appliances in Smart Grids

Recently there has been an increase of interest in implementing a new set of home appliances, known as Smart Appliances that integrate Information Technologies, the Internet of Things and the ability of communicating with other devices. While Smart Appliances are characterized as an important milestone on the path to the Smart Grid, by being able to automatically schedule their loads according to a tariff or reflecting the power that is generated using renewable sources, there is not a clear understanding on the impact that the behavior of such devices will have in the comfort levels of users, when they shift their working periods to earlier, or later than, a preset time. Given these considerations, in this work we analyse the results of an assessment survey carried out to a group of Home Appliance users regarding their habits when dealing with these machines and the subjective impact in quality caused by either finishing its programs before or after the time limit set by the user. The results of this work are expected to be used as input for the evaluation of load scheduling algorithms running in energy management systems.

Ant colony optimization routing mechanisms with bandwidth sensing

The study and understanding of the social behavior of insects has contributed to the definition of some algorithms that are capable of solving several types of optimization problems. In 1997 Di Caro and Dorigo developed the first routing algorithm for wired networks, called AntNet, using an approach which was inspired in the behavior of ant colonies. At each node, AntNet, similar to others Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) based algorithms, forward ants based in the amount of pheromones present in the links and in response to the nodes queue lengths. In this paper, an adaptation of the e-DANTE algorithm for discrete problems, as an IP based routing mechanism, was implemented. We also propose the inclusion of a new parameter for the computation of paths for both the AntNet and the newly proposed algorithm: the available bandwith. Those methods were tested in ns-2 using two dense network architectures and their efficiency is compared with the original AntNet and a Link-State routing algorithm, when considering the transmission of competing traffic flows between distinct nodes.

Portable Device for Touch, Taste and Smell Sensations in Augmented Reality Experiences

The purpose of this work is to present a portable hardware device that can provide touch, taste and smell sensations to an augmented reality experience. The proposed hardware is part of a mobile five senses augmented reality system for Museums, to improve and augment, as much as possible, the visiting of a museum, i.e., see, ear, touch, feel and experience all its interesting objects. The existing solutions related to the augment of sensing experiences consist of big hardware systems and they are far from being portable. In this work, a new small and portable device is presented, to integrate and connect with the user’s smartphone to provide the complete five-sense experience. The implemented device adds to the complete augmented system, the touch, smell and taste experiences. Moreover, the device is flexible enough to adapt itself to different sizes of the user’s smartphone or tablet. It is powered by a rechargeable battery, which gives the module the ability to keep the system running during the visit of the museum. The core unit is a microcontroller, it receives instructions from the mobile application in the user’s smartphone and acts accordingly, controlling the remaining hardware of the portable device to deliver the five-sense experience to the user. The communication between the device and the mobile application is possible through wireless communication, using a Bluetooth interface. The communication with the remaining module, denoted here as physical interfaces, will be wired. Preliminary results of device’s first prototype are also presented in this paper.

GyGSLA: A Portable Glove System for Learning Sign Language Alphabet

The communication between people with normal hearing with those having hearing or speech impairment is difficult. Learning a new alphabet is not always easy, especially when it is a sign language alphabet, which requires both hand skills and practice. This paper presents the GyGSLA system, standing as a completely portable setup created to help inexperienced people in the process of learning a new sign language alphabet. To achieve it, a computer/mobile game-interface and an hardware device, a wearable glove, were developed. When interacting with the computer or mobile device, using the wearable glove, the user is asked to represent alphabet letters and digits, by replicating the hand and fingers positions shown in a screen. The glove then sends the hand and fingers positions to the computer/mobile device using a wireless interface, which interprets the letter or digit that is being done by the user, and gives it a corresponding score. The system was tested with three completely inexperience sign language subjects, achieving a 76 % average recognition ratio for the Portuguese sign language alphabet.

A Renewable Source Aware Model for the Charging of Plug-in Electrical Vehicles

The number of Electric Vehicles is estimated to continuously rise over the next years. While this trend is expected to lead to a reduction in CO2 emission, existing electrical grids have not been planned to support a large number of electrical vehicle’s batteries charging simultaneously. The integration of distributed production using renewable energy sources is seen as a solution to meet the requirements of battery charging. Renewable sources are however affected by variation and lack of predictability, due to the environmental factors they depend on, which are the cause of inefficiencies and mismatches in the required demand-response equilibrium. In these conditions, the model and the associated scheduling algorithms to use in medium to large charging parks play an important role, due to the implications it has in their operational costs and in the maximization of the return of investments made in renewable sources. In this paper we propose and evaluate a charging model that engages users to participate in demand response measures, by giving them the ability of selecting two energy components for the charging of their electrical vehicles, one of which varies according with the variable nature of renewable sources. Based in this model we propose one scheduling algorithm and compare it with several other solutions, demonstrating that the proposed solution is able of achieving a significant cost reduction with significant low computational complexity and processing times, while achieving a high ratio of renewable energy usage.

Handbook of Research on Human-Computer Interfaces, Developments, and Applications

Human Computer Interaction (HCI) is easy to define yet difficult to predict. Encompassing the management, study, planning, and design of the ways in which users interact with computers, this field has evolved from using punch cards to force touch in a matter of decades. What was once considered science fiction is now ubiquitous. The future of HCI is mercurial, yet predictions point to the effortless use of high-functioning services. The Handbook of Research on Human-Computer Interfaces, Developments, and Applications is primarily concerned with emerging research regarding gesture interaction, augmented reality, and assistive technologies and their place within HCI. From gaming to rehabilitation systems, these new technologies share the need to interface with humans, and as computers become thoroughly integrated into everyday life, so does the necessity of HCI research. This handbook of research benefits the research needs of programmers, developers, students and educators in computer science, and researchers.

Integration of a Real-Time Stochastic Routing Optimization Software with an Enterprise Resource Planner

In order to manage their activities in a centralized manner, an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is a fundamental tool to many companies. As a generic software, many times it’s necessary to add new functionalities to the ERP in order to improve and to adapt/suite it to the companies’ processes. The Intelligent Fresh Food Fleet Router (i3FR) project aims to meet the needs expressed by several companies, namely the usefulness of a tool that makes “intelligent” management of the food distribution logistics. This “intelligence” presupposes interconnection capacity of various platforms (e.g., fleet management, GPS, and logistics), and active communication between them in order to optimize and enable integrated decisions.

Applying an Implicit Recommender System in the Preparation of Visits to Cultural Heritage Places

The visit to cultural places can be an enormous pleasure, where visitors are driven to see and explore historical or contemporary objects. The same journey can also be fastidious when the visitor is taken to lengthy walks, unwanted collections or the objects archive is too large. For many of us, a visit should be something limited in time, showing a variety of things of our own interest. Information systems and in particular mobile devices can play a fundamental role to get us close to that objective by collecting information used to feed recommender systems.

Development of an Energy Management System for the Charge Scheduling of Plug-in Electric Vehicles

As the number of Plug-In Electric Vehicles continues to rise, existing electrical grids need to adapt to support the expected charging demand of such vehicles. Fortunately, a growing number of renewable energy sources are also being introduced in current electrical grids, reducing the dependency on fossil fuels. Leveraged by the self-consumption legislation in several countries, the introduction of renewable energy sources continue to happen well beyond the end of the feed-in tariff rates. However, due to their variable nature, renewable energy sources are frequently characterized as intermittent resources, which cause mismatches in the required equilibrium between production and demand. In this scenario, the role of end users is very important, since they are not only required to participate in energy generation - becoming the so-called prosumers – but also they should allow the adjustment of the consumption, according with the generation levels. Plug-In Electric Vehicles, due to their power requirements, just exacerbate this problem. Following our previous work concerning scheduling algorithms for self-consumption scenarios, in this paper we describe the implementation of an Energy Management System for the charge scheduling of Electric Vehicles. The proposed system considers several requirements, including electrical grid limitations, present time and subsequent tariff costs, actual and predicted renewable energy generation levels, and user preferences. It then runs an optimization algorithm that decides when the charging of such vehicles should happen and controls the power delivered to charge them, accordingly.

Interactive 360 Degree Holographic Installation

Withnewmarketingstrategiesandtechnologies,newdemandsarise,andthestandardpublicrelation orsalespersonisnotenough,costumerstendtohavehigherstandardswhilecompaniestrytocapture theirattention,requiringtheuseofcreativecontentsandideas.Forthispurpose,thisarticledescribes howaninteractiveholographicinstallationwasdeveloped,makinguseofaholographictechnology tocallattentionofpotentialclients.This isachievedbyworkingasahostorshowingaproduct advertisingthecompany.Theinstallationconsistsina360degree(8view)holographicavataror objectandoptionality,alsoascreen,whereasetofmenuswithvideos,imagesandtextualcontents arepresented.ItusesseveralMicrosoftKinectsensorsforenablinguser(andotherpersons)tracking andnaturalinteractionaroundtheinstallation,throughgesturesandspeechwhilebuildingseveral statisticsofthevisualizedcontent.Allthosestatisticscanbeanalyzedon-the-flybythecompanyto understandthesuccessoftheevent. KeywoRDS Computer Vision, Gesture Recognition, Holography, Human-Computer Interaction, Interfaces, Kinect, Sound