João Quintas

Information Model and Architecture Specification for Context Awareness Interaction Decision Support in Cyber-Physical Human–Machine Systems

This paper aims to contribute to situation, activity, and goal awareness in cyber-physical human–machine systems (HMS) by presenting a new information model and specifications for a decision-making component that can be integrated in current system architectures. The objective of this work is to improve the efficacy, acceptance, adaptability, and overall performance of HMS and human–system interaction (HSI) applications using a context-based approach. Our hypothesis is that we can enhance current interaction functionalities by integrating context and interaction information models into a decision-making component that behaves as a supervision process for controlling interaction. In HSI, we aim to define a general human model that may lead to principles and algorithms, allowing more natural and effective interaction between humans and artificial agents. The approach was implemented and tested targeting application in the domain of active and assisted living. The challenge of user acceptance is of vital importance for future solutions and is still one of the major reasons for reluctance to adopt cyber-physical systems in this domain.

Auto-Adaptive Interactive Systems for Active and Assisted Living Applications

The objective of this work is of improving the efficacy, acceptance, adaptability and overall performance of Human-Machine Interaction (HMI) applications using a context-based approach. In HMI, we aim to define a general human model that may lead to principles and algorithms allowing more natural and effective interaction between humans and artificial agents. This is paramount for applications in the field of Active and Assisted Living (AAL). The challenge of user acceptance is of vital importance for future solutions, and still one of the major reasons for reluctance to adopt cyber-physical systems in this domain. Our hypothesis is that, we can overcome limitations of current interaction functionalities by integrating contextual information to improve algorithms accuracy when performing under very different conditions and to adapt interfaces and interaction patterns according user intentions and emotional states.

Information Persistence Services Designed to Support Home Care

Background Due to the challenges faced by health and social care systems, in particular those related to actual demographic trends, home care emerges as a potentially cost-effective solution to answer the needs of citizens, and to allow the reallocation of resources to alternatives to hospitalization or institutionalization. Objective Home care services require cooperation between different actors, including health and social caregivers, care receivers, and their informal caregivers (eg, relatives or friends), across time, space, and organizational boundaries. Therefore, it is foreseeable that eHealth services can contribute to their improvement. The aim of this study is to evaluate information persistence services based on the Reference Information Model (RIM) of the Health Level Seven (HL7) version 3 to support formal caregivers, both health and social care providers, and informal caregivers in the context of home care services. Methods A pilot study was set up involving two Portuguese institutions that provide home care services for the elderly. Defining of information requirements was performed according to a comprehensive process. This included a review of the literature, observations of work activities, interviews with caregivers, care receivers and their relatives, analysis of paper documentation related to care receivers’ histories, health conditions and care plans, and brainstorming groups involving specialized professionals. Following this, information objects were implemented and validated. Results The methodological approach, as well as the information persistence services, proved to be robust and adequate to specify, implement, and validate different types of information objects related to home care services for the elderly. This study also reinforces the application of the RIM of the HL7 version 3 beyond the strict scope of health care, allowing the persistence of not only health care information, but also information related to social assistance activities. Conclusions This study contributes to the ongoing efforts related to the development of eHealth applications to improve the cooperation among formal health care and social caregivers, as well as care receivers and their informal caregivers.

On the Validation of Computerised Lung Auscultation

The development of computerised diagnosis tools based on lung auscultation necessitates appropriate validation. So far, this work front has received insufficient attention from researchers; validation studies found in the literature are largely flawed. We believe that building open-access crowd-sourced information systems based on large-scale repositories of respiratory sound files is an essential task and should be urgently addressed. Most diagnosis tools are based on automatic adventitious lung sound (ALS) detection algorithms. The gold standards required to assess their performance can only be obtained by human expert annotation of a statistically significant set of respiratory sound files; given the inevitable subjectivity of the process, statistical agreement criteria must be applied to multiple independent annotations obtained for each file. For these reasons, the information systems we propose should provide simple, efficient annotation tools; facilitate the formation of credible annotation panels; apply appropriate agreement criteria and metrics to generate goldstandard ALS annotation files and, based on them, allow easy quantitative assessment of detection algorithm performance.

Sensor-Based Detection of Alzheimer’S Disease-Related Behaviors

This paper presents the use of wearable sensors to detect one of the symptoms of the Alzheimer Disease that has a large impact on life quality of both patients and caregivers - Psychomotor Agitation. The study involved the evaluation of five classification algorithms for the given purpose. The results show that the SVMclassifier using a few features extracted from the measured signals has the best performance.

Indoor Localization and Tracking Using 802.11 Networks and Smartphones

ambient assisted living is an area of interest because of the potential for aid in needs and difficulties for the elderly or disabled. These systems have the potential to help control medication intake up to saving lives by complex monitoring. In this type of monitoring, an indoor localization system is necessary. We propose an indoor localization system based on existing WiFi networks, which doubles as a platform to store positional data. This is implemented through location fingerprinting with added value and precision.

Magnetic signal processing methods with application to geophysical navigation of marine robotic vehicles

The present paper describes the development of geophysical navigation (GN) methods for small, affordable underwater robotic vehicles. The proposed GN methods includes a classical, bathymetric-based terrain-aided navigation (TAN) approach, a magnetic-based geophysical navigation solution (MAGNAV), and an integration of both methods (TAN-MAGNAV). Due to insufficient topographic features in the adopted test site, the classical TAN approach performed poorly in terms of positioning accuracy. To mitigate this, the complementarity of magnetic and topographic terrain information was exploited, initially using only magnetic data to estimate the vehicle position and later by fusing magnetic and altitude data. The results obtained illustrate the high potential of using magnetic data for geophysical navigation of autonomous underwater vehicles. The navigation methods described are validated in simulated trials using real magnetic, topographic, and navigation data acquired with an autonomous marine vehicle in real trials. The equipment employed in the proposed solution consists of standard navigation sensors, a sonar altimeter, and an affordable total field magnetometer.

Verification Methodology of Ethical Compliance for Users, Researchers and Developers of Personal Care Robots

Demographic change is boosting the use of assistive technologies, like Personal Care Robots (PCR), in elderly care. However, the legislation and guidelines for the development of PCR is still fragmented and structured tools and procedures are required. This article presents a proposal for a Verification Methodology for Ethical Compliance in robotic platforms development. Differently from other projects and publications, it does not devote itself to discourse on ethical and moral issues itself but in suggesting a structured method to approach these issues, facilitating an integrated and holistic approach that can ensure more adjusted and fruitful outcomes. This methodology works around a constellation of actors - researchers, developers and end-users – that were involved in all different phases of its development and should also intervene in its enforcement.

European Portuguese Validation of Usefulness, Satisfaction and Ease of Use Questionnaire (USE)

Background: The Usefulness, Satisfaction and Ease of use (USE) is a 30-item questionnaire developed to assess self-perceived usability. Objective: The study reported in this paper supports the translation, cultural adaptation and validation of the European Portuguese version of the USE. Methods: The study was divided into two phases, the questionnaire translation and adaptation, and the assessment of its validity and reliability. Results: The questionnaire translation resulted in a European Portuguese version of the USE equivalent to the original version in terms of semantic and content, which presents an excellent internal consistency (α = 0.80), highly satisfactory ICC values (ICC = 0.69) and a high and significant correlation (r = −0.84, p < 0.05) with another widely used usability questionnaire, the Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire. Conclusion: The European Portuguese version of the USE has adequate psychometric properties that provide adequate evidence of the possibility of using this version in studies to evaluate the self-perceived usability of products or services.

Interoperability in cloud robotics — Developing and matching knowledge information models for heterogenous multi-robot systems

Every file, document, database and digital information is now going through the Cloud. Leveraged by the developments in information systems, Cloud Robotics is evolving at a steady pace and raised attention in the past 5 years. This recent field of Robotics is allowing engineers to envisage new and exciting applications for robots in the near future. This work proposes Cloud Robotics as a mean to integrate semantic reasoning in a multi-robot system, using self-created knowledge bases in each robot, in order to perform the coordination of complex task allocation. An auction-based coordination method and a knowledge matching algorithm were implemented to study this subject. The obtained results demonstrated that, the coordination of a large multi-robot system and the knowledge matching process can be computationally demanding, thus making them perfect candidate features to be “cloudyfied”.