Jorge Parra

Motion-path based gesture interaction with smart home services

In this paper, we propose a motion-path based gesture recognition technique and show its application in a smart home environment. Users hand gestures are recognized by capturing the motion-path while they draw different symbols in the air. In order to capture the motion-path, we use infra-red cameras IR sensing capability. The IR camera tracks the infra-red emitter attached to the users hand gloves and produces a sequence of motion-points, which are then analyzed syntactically to recognize the intended hand gesture. The recognized gesture is used to interact with the intelligent environment for accessing various services. Toggling a lamp switch, changing the light intensity, and playing/pausing a movie are few examples where we have integrated the gesture-based interaction. Our experiment shows that the proposed gesture recognition technique is robust and its use in the smart home environment is interesting and appealing to the people.

A framework for human-centered provisioning of ambient media services

The provisioning of ambient media in the user’s environment requires that a system handles the different aspects related to the media selection process. For example, ambient media is delivered to the user depending on their context and hence, the system needs to dynamically determine the context and provide media that are relevant therein. To set the premise of ambient media, a system may also need to customize the physical environment, for example, by dimming the lighting level or by lowering the volume. Besides, users’ need for media services changes over time and space that requires mechanisms to continually update their preferences based on their mobility in the environment. In this paper, we propose an ambient media service provisioning framework that incorporates the above requirements while keeping the user at the center of the media selection loop. To demonstrate the usefulness of this framework, we show experimental results by considering real-life scenario in a smart home environment.

Analysis of Effects- and Preconditions-Based Service Representation in Ubiquitous Computing Environments

In the vision of ubiquitous computing environment described by Weiser (1991)the environment is populated by smart devices which adapt depending on the user context in order to meet the userpsilas needs and look after them. But we are still a long way from this vision because the current devices describe their functionalities in a very simple manner, not in an expressive way, and therefore it is difficult to automate the behaviour of the environment. The first aim of this research work is to justify the need of use of an approach based on preconditions (the necessary state of the world before executing the service) and effects (the change in the state of the world after executing the service) to service representation in this kind of environment, and the second aim is to analyze the main languages for semantic service description in order to find out which capabilities are offered by each language and study which could be best suitable for this vision.

A Framework for a Context-Aware Elderly Entertainment Support System

Elderly people constitute a major portion of worlds population. Many of them are physically and mentally vulnerable and need continuous support for their health and well-being. There is a growing trend that these elderly people are placed in an ambient assisted living environment (AAL) with an aim to receive better care and support. In such settings, a lot of attention has been given to continuous health monitoring for maintaining physical health status. However, much less attention has been given toward understanding the entertainment needs of the elderly people, which is an important factor relevant to their mental health and joyful living. This paper thus addresses the entertainment needs of the elderly and proposes a framework of an elderly entertainment support system. The proposed framework enables different categories of residents (e.g., elderly people and caregivers) to access various media services in both implicit and explicit manner in order to enhance the quality of their living experience in different contexts. Our experimental results demonstrate the viability of the proposed framework. We believe that the proposed approach will establish the need to develop entertainment systems and services for the elderly people and allow us to sensibly address the problems associated with their independent, happy and active living.

QoS management for dependable sensory environments

Sensory environments for healthcare are commonplace nowadays. A patient monitoring system in such an environment deals with sensor data capture, transmission and processing in order to provide on-the-spot support for monitoring the vulnerable and critical patients. A fault in such a system can be hazardous on the health of the patient. Therefore, such a system must be dependable and ensure reliability, fault-tolerance, safety and other critical aspects, in order to deploy it in real scenario. Also, the management of the infrastructure resources must be efficient and the eventual system reconfiguration must be reliably performed. This paper encounters some of these issues and proposes a component platform with specific support for several QoS aspects, namely fault tolerance, safe inter-component communication and resource management. The platform adopts the Service Component Architecture (SCA) model and defines a Data Distribution Service (DDS) binding, which provides the fault tolerance and the required safety-ensuring techniques and measures, as defined in the IEC 61784-3-3 standard. As a proof of concept, a distributed home care application that improves the medical assistance in case of fire detection is presented.

QoS Aware Middleware Support for Dynamically Reconfigurable Component Based IoT Applications

Sensor web systems, cyber-physical systems, and the so-called Internet of Things are concepts that share a set of common characteristics. The nature of such systems is highly dynamic and very heterogeneous and issues such as interoperability, energy consumption, or resource management must be properly managed to ensure the operation of the applications within the required quality of service level. In this context, base technologies such as component based software engineering or Service Oriented Architecture can play a central role. Model driven development and middleware technologies also aid in the design, development, and operation of such systems. This paper presents a middleware solution that provides runtime support for the complete lifecycle management of a system consisting of several concurrent applications running over a set of distributed infrastructure nodes. The middleware builds up on top of a general purpose component model and is driven by a quality of service aware self-configuration algorithm that provides stateful reconfiguration capabilities in face of both internal (application triggered) and external (application unaware) reconfiguration events. The platform has been deployed over an automated warehouse supervision system that serves as a case study.

From sensing to alerting: a pathway of RESTstful messaging in ambient assisted living

Sensing and alerting are fundamental to AAL. It is a long way from sensing to alerting, where lots of messages are interchanged among different processing units. Starting from the transfer of sensed data to the data processor and all the way to the alert generator, messages change in format, type, and size when intended for different stakeholders. Along this way, it becomes important to decide which messages to transfer, how to transfer, and when to transfer, taking into account the dependability requirements for a reliable AAL system. This article highlights AAL communication from various message transfer perspectives and proposes a general framework of alert/response in an AAL environment addressing these messaging requirements. The cornerstone of the proposed framework is the consideration of dependable RESTful communication throughout the message trail within a local and cloud-based environment. This is coupled with a publish-subscribe mechanism that offers a lightweight solution to address the variability of message transfers in AAL.

QoS aware platform for dependable sensory environments

Sensory environments for healthcare are commonplace nowadays. A patient monitoring system in such an environment deals with sensor data capture, transmission and processing in order to provide on-the-spot support for monitoring the vulnerable and critical patient. A fault in such a system can be hazardous on the health of the patient. Therefore, such a system must be dependable and ensure reliability, fault-tolerance, safety and other critical aspects, in order to deploy it in real scenario. This paper encounters some of these issues and proposes a component platform to develop a flexible framework with specific support for fault tolerance and safe inter-component communication related QoS aspects. The platform adopts the Service Component Architecture (SCA) model and defines a Data Distribution Service (DDS) binding, which provides the fault tolerance and the required safety-ensuring techniques and measures, as defined in the IEC 61784-3-3 standard.

RESTful Discovery and Eventing for Service Provisioning in Assisted Living Environments

Service provisioning in assisted living environments faces distinct challenges due to the heterogeneity of networks, access technology, and sensing/actuation devices in such an environment. Existing solutions, such as SOAP-based web services, can interconnect heterogeneous devices and services, and can be published, discovered and invoked dynamically. However, it is considered heavier than what is required in the smart environment-like context and hence suffers from performance degradation. Alternatively, REpresentational State Transfer (REST) has gained much attention from the community and is considered as a lighter and cleaner technology compared to the SOAP-based web services. Since it is simple to publish and use a RESTful web service, more and more service providers are moving toward REST-based solutions, which promote a resource-centric conceptualization as opposed to a service-centric conceptualization. Despite such benefits of REST, the dynamic discovery and eventing of RESTful services are yet considered a major hurdle to utilization of the full potential of REST-based approaches. In this paper, we address this issue, by providing a RESTful discovery and eventing specification and demonstrate it in an assisted living healthcare scenario. We envisage that through this approach, the service provisioning in ambient assisted living or other smart environment settings will be more efficient, timely, and less resource-intensive.

Context-aware elderly entertainment support system in assisted living environment

Worldwide elderly population is increasing. Many of these elderly are placed in assisted living environment, and they often need cognitive or physical support in their daily lives. To address such need, a lot of attention have been given from various perspectives such as health monitoring, medication adherence, body-sensor network, smart home for elderly and disabled and so on. However, very less focus has been directed to address the entertainment needs of the elderly, which is an important aspect for an enjoyable living. This paper proposes the design of a context-aware elderly entertainment support system (CAEESS) by investigating the entertainment requirements based on the perspectives of elderly and caregiver. Our focus is on the technical platform to fulfill the identified requirements. The proposed system facilitates the elderly to access various entertainment services through different modes of interaction and also empowers the caregiver to select entertainment media or resources for the elderly when needed. We believe that the proposed approach will provide a clear understanding of the requirements of CAEESS and enable us to effectively address the problems related to the independent and happy living of the elderly.