Shahrul Azmi Mohd Yusof

Designing a robot-assisted therapy for individuals with anxiety traits and states

The recent trend towards developing a new generation of robots capable of operating in human-centered environments, and participating in and assisting our daily lives has introduced the need for robotic systems capable to communicate and to react to their users in a social and engaging way. This type of robot could play essential roles to help individuals with severe cognitive problems. In this paper, several core components to design a robotic assisted therapy to support individuals with anxiety traits and states are presented.

Vowel recognition based on frequency ranges determined by bandwidth approach

Automatic speech recognition (ASR) has made great strides with the development of digital signal processing hardware and software especially using English as the language of choice. In this paper, a new feature extraction method is presented to identify vowels recorded from 80 Malaysian speakers. The features were obtained from vocal tract model based on bandwidth (BW) approach. Bandwidth approach identifies frequency bands based on the first peak of vowel frequency responses. Mean and maximum energies were calculated from these Bandwidth frequency bands. Classification results from bandwidth approach were compared with the first 3-formant features using Linear Predictive method. A multi-layer perceptron (MLP) and multinomial logistic regression (MLR) were used to classify the vowels. MLR and MLP shows comparable classification results for BW approach of 96.40% and 96.59% respectively. Bandwidth approach obtained 5.49% higher classification rate than 3-formant features using MLP.

Virtual robot: virtual becomes reality

One of the benefits that education reaps from virtual reality (VR) is the ability to visualize, simulate and interact with virtual objects. This ability allows students to have a trial and error session before actually practicing on real objects. The article considers the idea of a virtual robot assisting students in learning. Instead of studying a physical robot in class, students can study a virtual robot on a computer at home prior to or even in the class itself. Students can immerse themselves in this digitized world and experience the sense of moving and becoming part of the robot system. This paper presents a methodology for the whole-robot 3D graphics design, integration between object modeling and VR, and the construction of real-time behavior and interactivity modification to accommodate changes in the virtual environment.

Formal Analysis of Temporal Dynamics in Anxiety States and Traits for Virtual Patients

This paper presents a temporal dynamic model of anxiety states and traits for an individual. Anxiety is a natural part of life, and most of us experience it from time to time. But for some people, anxiety can be extreme. Based on several personal characteristics, traits, and a representation of events (i.e. psychological and physiological stressors), the formal model can represent whether a human that experience certain scenarios will fall into an anxiety states condition. A number of well-known relations between events and the course of anxiety are summarized from the literature and it is shown that the model exhibits those patterns. In addition, the formal model has been mathematically analyzed to find out which stable situations exist. Finally, it is pointed out how this model can be used in therapy, supported by a software agent.

Suitability of online 3D visualization technique in oil palm plantation management

Oil palm industry has been the backbone for the growth of Malaysia economy. The exports of this commodity increasing almost every year. Therefore, there are many studies focusing on how to help this industry increased its productivity. In order to increase the productivity, the management of oil palm plantation need to be improved and strengthen. One of the solution in helping the oil palm manager is by implementing online 3D visualization technique for oil palm plantation using game engine technology. The potential of this application is that it can helps in fertilizer and irrigation management. For this reason, the aim of this paper is to investigate the issues in managing oil palm plantation from the view of oil palm manager by interview. The results from this interview will helps in identifying the suitable issues could be highlight in implementing online 3D visualization technique for oil palm plantation management.