Sergio Borger

A crowdsourcing platform for the construction of accessibility maps

We present in this article a crowdsourcing platform that enables the collaborative creation of accessibility maps. The platform provides means for integration of different kind of data, collected automatically or with user intervention, to augment standard maps with accessibility information. The article shows the architecture of the platform, dedicating special attention to the smartphone applications we developed for data collection. The article also describes a preliminar experiment conducted on field, showing how the analysis of data produced by our solution can bring novel insights in accessibility challenges that can be found in cities.

Video analytics for retail

We describe a set of tools for retail analytics based on a combination of video understanding and transaction-log. Tools are provided for loss prevention (returns fraud and cashier fraud), store operations (customer counting) and merchandising (display effectiveness). Results are presented on returns fraud and customer counting.

S3: The IBM Smart Surveillance System: From Transactional Systems to Observational Systems

Pervasive sensor based systems are transforming Information Technology systems from being transactional in nature to being observational in nature. Observational systems are inherently distributed and capture information at a much finer grain of space and time. Enabling and building such systems also poses many technology challenges, extracting information from sensor signals, indexing and searching sensor meta-data, data mining and scalability. In this paper we use S3: the IBM smart surveillance system as an example of an observational system to explore several of these issues through real world deployment examples.

A Platform for Citizen Sensing in Sentient Cities

This work develops upon the concepts of Sentient City – living in a city that can remember, correlate, and anticipate – and Citizen Sensor Networks. We aim at technologies to interconnect people, allowing them to actively observe, report, collect, analyse, and disseminate information about urban events. We are investigating new methods and technologies to enhance administrators’ capabilities in urban planning and management. We are proposing a platform to instrument citizens and cities, interconnect parties, analyse related events, and provide recommendation and feedback reports. The solution encompasses four types of elements: (i) mobile applications for intentional and non-intentional reporting of events; (ii) enhanced analytic models to centralize information, analyse the data, identify trends and operation patterns, and provide insightful information to decision makers; (iii) advanced social simulations to anticipate “what if” scenarios for infrastructure planning; and (iv) interfaces for monitoring, feedback, and recommendation. This research builds upon the IBM Smarter Cities project, part of the IBM Smarter Planet program. The outcomes of this research yield significant social contributions. By using it, administrators can make reliable decisions that will impact social services, traffic, energy and utilities, public safety, retail, communications, and economic development.

Smarter board: a community-oriented communication tool

In this demo we present the Smarter Board, a platform designed to facilitate the creation of a community-focused social network, with a special focus on groups of people with disabilities. The communication is based on text messages, which makes the system easy to use and more accessible to communities where network connections are not well-developed and where the people do not have much experience with more advanced technological tools. The solution also provides a manage interface, through which administrators are able to mediate the messages and the users. We also implemented a matching procedure for the identification of related posts (e.g., it can check if there are compatible car ride offers and car ride requests) in order to make users aware of what is being posted and, even more important, adopt the technology.

Marker-assisted recognition of dynamic content in public spaces

In this work we present an image processing-based assistant for helping visually impaired citizens with the task of recognizing dynamic content within fixed layouts of displays in public spaces. Our solution relies on the placement of markers, in order to facilitate the location and recognition of target objects and, at the same time, provide hints to users about how to better position their mobile devices cameras to capture the whole information contained in the display.

Shared message boards for smart enterprises

Shared Message Boards foster communication practices within restricted groups that typically do not emerge in traditional social networks. In this article, we describe an experiment in which a Shared Message Board technology was employed to support carpooling activities in a large company in Brazil. Based on the results extracted from the platform and from two user studies, we identified important elements influencing the adoption of this technology as well as other activities where it can be effectively used in order to promote the development of smart enterprises.

Marker-based image recognition of dynamic content for the visually impaired

The access to information displayed in public spaces is a challenge faced by visually impaired people for which image processing techniques have the potential to deliver satisfactory solutions. However, object recognition algorithms must initially locate possible candidates in the images, which is a hard task in complex scenes. In this article, we introduce an image processing technique that relies on the incorporation of markers to panels and boards with fixed layouts displaying dynamic content. The markers allow: a) locating the objects to be recognized; b) correcting perspective in the input images; c) limiting the training set size for supervised learning; and d) guiding the visually impaired by indicating how they should position their devices for adequate pictures. The proposed technique can be used for automatic recognition of texts and images and is suitable for deployment on mobile devices, providing more independence to the citizens. Results of preliminary tests on vending machines show that this method is robust enough to be used in practice.