Rui Neves Madeira

Microwave FMCW Doppler radar implementation for in-house pervasive health care system

In recent years, the research in the area of ubiquitous healthcare has intensified. There are many technological advances regarding the development of unobtrusive sensors for cardiac and respiratory activity, but the current scenario is still far away from an everyday life fulfilled with ubiquitous healthcare systems. In this paper, it is described the usage of 24GHz microwave FMCW (frequency modulated continuous wave) Doppler radar (MDR) as one of the main components of a pervasive biomedical system that is part of an assistive environment for the people with less mobility or people with long term health condition. As parts of the present work, in this paper are mentioned the design and implementation of an assistive environment based on a MDR sensor, an experimental study concerning the microwave Doppler radar characteristics and remote sensing of heart rate and breath rate, based on acquisition and processing of the signals delivered by the used radar.

UbiSmartWheel: a ubiquitous system with unobtrusive services embedded on a wheelchair

Ubiquitous Computing has the main goal of building computing systems that support and facilitate the daily lives of users, but being the least intrusive possible. There are many technological advances reported in literature, but the current scenario is still far away from an everyday life fulfilled with ubiquitous systems. The main objective of this work is to present a pervasive biomedical assistive environment for the elderly, with a wheelchair as a smart object. The wheelchair includes embedded sensors to measure physiological parameters such as heart rate and respiratory rate, mechanical quantities such acceleration. A LF RFID reader is associated with in order to assure the wheelchair user identification and wheelchair trajectory estimation considering different RFID tags that are distributed on the floor. Based on the implemented RFID system accompanying persons of the wheelchairs user are identified too. A generic architecture was designed to implement this kind of computing infrastructure in any physical space, like a home for elderly. It takes into account the distribution of the system by the various entities in the environment, which are users (elderly, watcher, and clinic), objects (e.g., the wheelchair) and situated displays.

PhysioMate - Pervasive Physical Rehabilitation based on NUI and Gamification

Serious games based therapy is currently gaining a lot of interest by the healthcare community. Moreover, the use of Virtual Reality technology in rehabilitation has attracted significant interest in the physical therapy area. This paper presents PhysioMate, which is a project with the aim of developing software based on the concept of serious games for physical rehabilitation. The PhysioMate aims to encourage physical exercise in order to combat both physical and cognitive deterioration, functioning as a complement to the work of physical therapists, with and without their live supervision. Initially, the project has been focused on the rehabilitation of patients dependent on wheelchairs, whether they are victims of stroke or elderly people. Thus, we selected five essential simple movements of the upper-body for balance training and motor coordination, in which underlies the game mechanics of PhysioMate. We use the Microsoft Kinect sensor to detect and track the movements of patients.

Multi-usage of microwave Doppler radar in pervasive healthcare systems for elderly

Health assessment requirements for aging population have accentuated the need of ubiquitous and pervasive e-Health environments. Recently, new implemented embedded vital signs sensors were joined to ubiquitous computation in order to materialize Ubi-Health systems with lower price and augmented interoperability in comparison with traditional clinical instrumentation for in house health status monitoring needs. The work reports the utilization of the smart sensor based on 24GHz microwave FMCW (frequency modulated continuous wave) Doppler embedded in smart objects such as wheelchairs, walkers or crutches used by elderly, that perform cardiorespiratory signs and physical activity monitoring. According to the requirements of sensor identification and wireless data communication between the smart sensor and the advanced signal processing, data logging and web publishing unit, a combination between Bluetooth MAC based identification and Virtual Transducer Electronic Data Sheet was implemented. The system allows vital signs and motor activity monitoring, including gait characterization.

Designing personalized therapeutic serious games for a pervasive assistive environment

Serious games-based therapies are currently gaining massive interest of both computer science and healthcare communities. This paper focuses on the design and use of personalized therapeutic serious games in a pervasive healthcare assistive environment that integrates smart objects such as wheelchairs. The smart objects have embedded sensors to measure physiological parameters. Tablet PCs are being attached to the wheelchairs, serving several application purposes. We are in the process of studying and developing a serious games model, taking into account elements such as the use of RFID for game playing, tablets for interaction and patients physiological vital signals for personalization and adaptation issues. The first prototype is directed to address therapeutics activities in aphasia and alexia, the most common speech and language disturbance in stroke and head trauma. The paper also describes the rationale, the game description and the main development issues behind this prototype.

LEY!: persuasive pervasive gaming on domestic energy consumption-awareness

Nowadays, energy consumption (and wastage) is particularly a major issue in our society. It has been a challenge to find ways of educating people to follow better attitudes towards energy savings. This paper proposes a pervasive-based serious game approach to help people understand household energy usage and to persuade them to change negative energy consumption habits. The mechanics of the game are based on real-time domestic energy consumption information, presenting a collaborative-competitive approach.

PortableLab: Implementation of a mobile remote laboratory for the Android platform

Mobile learning has been receiving increased attention from diverse conferences and publications. The attention is well deserved because, if correctly implemented, it constitutes an efficient complementary tool to the traditional learning methods. Following this idea, we present PortableLab, a mobile learning system that integrates an application developed for mobile devices with Google Android operating system. PortableLab allows students to analyze several poor quality power supply occurrences. For this, the mobile remote laboratory has to connect to a database server where real-time measured data is stored by a local signal processing module. The mobile application was designed as a complementary mean to the classic laboratory lessons. The developed system is a step forward in the development of mobile learning courses, presenting new contents directed for a ‘hot’ platform. This paper describes the system, giving special focus on the systems overall infrastructure and the chosen technical solutions for the mobile application implementation, as well as on some preliminary results.

Development of a mobile learning framework for an analog electronics course

With the growing popularity of mobile devices, several projects for mobile learning courses have been developed. Those equipments allow a superior portability and accessibility of the learning courses. In this context, the present paper focuses on the development of a mobile learning framework for an analog electronics course. This course was designed as a supplementary mean to the classic analog electronics courses. The course project consists of several interactive multimedia modules. At the end of each module, students have several oriented questions to answer. The set of answers, in SMS format, gives feedback to the teacher about the learning process. Another module, that is under development, is responsible for storing and managing the answers in a server, where all the results from students are processed in a competitive learning based methodology application.

A study and a proposal of a collaborative and competitive learning methodology

Competition is evident throughout our society, lives and work. “It transcends time and place, as well as all manners of people”. In this paper, we present a study and a framework proposal for a mixed collaborative-competitive learning environment, applied to a programming course in a University level engineering program. While neither collaboration, nor competition, is inherently good or bad in supporting the learning process, the way teachers employ these strategies in classrooms determines their value in preparing “soon-to-be” professionals. We believe this mixed-based learning approach best serves students as they are able to achieve academic success both in working with others and on an individual basis. Besides the traditional theoretical lessons and laboratory practices of the course, the integration of the framework automates all the support and evaluation processes. It implements both an individual competitive setting and a collaborative one, where intergroup competition occurs, by means of two interconnected modules. We discuss our results and findings in its preliminary use, concluding that the framework promises to have a good impact in the way we teach some programming courses in our Institute.

Interaction between Shared Displays and Mobile Devices in an Augmented Objects Framework

We are currently seeing a lot of research in the areas of ubiquitous computing involving mobile devices and public shared displays. In this paper, we describe an infrastructure to augment physical objects and an example using this framework to make information available to users, in a specific space, in an automatic and personalized way. The paper presents the ideas that guided the specification of the framework, the requirements for the applications that we developed, the technologies that were employed, and the results so far. The current status of the prototype, using mobile devices and public displays, leads us to think that our framework is generic enough to deal with most interactions between users and real world objects, supported by different types of technologies.