Interacting and making personalized recommendations of places of interest to tourists

Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 353

Sistema de posicionamento baseado em redes de sensores sem fios

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Eletrónica Industrial e Computadores

Aplicação móvel android de apoio a gestão de empréstimos e reservas das bibliotecas da Universidade do Minho

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia de Telecomunicações e Informática

Improving quality of medical service with mobile health software

An increasing number of m-Health applications are being developed benefiting health service delivery. In this paper, a new methodology based on the principle of calm computing applied to diagnostic and therapeutic procedure reporting is proposed. A mobile application was designed for the physicians of one of the Portuguese major hospitals, which takes advantage of a multi-agent interoperability platform, the Agency for the Integration, Diffusion and Archive (AIDA). This application allows the visualization of inpatients and outpatients medical reports in a quicker and safer manner, in addition to offer a remote access to information. This project shows the advantages in the use of mobile software in a medical environment but the first step is always to build or use an interoperability platform, flexible, adaptable and pervasive. The platform offers a comprehensive set of services that restricts the development of mobile software almost exclusively to the mobile user interface design. The technology was tested and assessed in a real context by intensivists.

Pervasive adaptive data acquisition gateway for critical healthcare

The data acquisition process in real-time is fundamental to provide appropriate services and improve health professionals decision. In this paper a pervasive adaptive data acquisition architecture of medical devices (e.g. vital signs, ventilators and sensors) is presented. The architecture was deployed in a real context in an Intensive Care Unit. It is providing clinical data in real-time to the INTCare system. The gateway is composed by several agents able to collect a set of patients’ variables (vital signs, ventilation) across the network. The paper shows as example the ventilation acquisition process. The clients are installed in a machine near the patient bed. Then they are connected to the ventilators and the data monitored is sent to a multithreading server which using Health Level Seven protocols records the data in the database. The agents associated to gateway are able to collect, analyse, interpret and store the data in the repository. This gateway is composed by a fault tolerant system that ensures a data store in the database even if the agents are disconnected. The gateway is pervasive, universal, and interoperable and it is able to adapt to any service using streaming data.

Development of benchmarks for operating costs and resources consumption to be used in healthcare building sustainability assessment methods

Since the last decade of the twentieth century, the healthcare industry is paying attention to the environmental impact of their buildings and therefore new regulations, policy goals and Buildings Sustainability Assessment (HBSA) methods are being developed and implemented. At the present, healthcare is one of the most regulated industries and it is also one of the largest consumers of energy per net floor area. To assess the sustainability of healthcare buildings it is necessary to establish a set of benchmarks related with their life-cycle performance. They are both essential to rate the sustainability of a project and to support designers and other stakeholders in the process of designing and operating a sustainable building, by allowing the comparison to be made between a project and the conventional and best market practices. This research is focused on the methodology to set the benchmarks for resources consumption, waste production, operation costs and potential environmental impacts related to the operational phase of healthcare buildings. It aims at contributing to the reduction of the subjectivity found in the definition of the benchmarks used in Building Sustainability Assessment (BSA) methods, and it is applied in the Portuguese context. These benchmarks will be used in the development of a Portuguese HBSA method.

Evaluating ubiquitous computing environments using 3D simulation

Human activity is very dynamic and subtle, and most physical environments are also highly dynamic and support a vast range of social practices that do not map directly into any immediate ubiquitous computing functionally. Identifying what is valuable to people is very hard and obviously leads to great uncertainty regarding the type of support needed and the type of resources needed to create such support. We have addressed the issues of system development through the adoption of a Crowdsourced software development model [13]. We have designed and developed Anywhere places, an open and flexible system support infrastructure for Ubiquitous Computing that is based on a balanced combination between global services and applications and situated devices. Evaluation, however, is still an open problem. The characteristics of ubiquitous computing environments make their evaluation very complex: there are no globally accepted metrics and it is very difficult to evaluate large-scale and long-term environments in real contexts. In this paper, we describe a first proposal of an hybrid 3D simulated prototype of Anywhere places that combines simulated and real components to generate a mixed reality which can be used to assess the envisaged ubiquitous computing environments [17].

Dynamic group formation in mobile computer supported collaborative learning environment

Forming suitable learning groups is one of the factors that determine the efficiency of collaborative learning activities. However, only a few studies were carried out to address this problem in the mobile learning environments. In this paper, we propose a new approach for an automatic, customized, and dynamic group formation in Mobile Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (MCSCL) contexts. The proposed solution is based on the combination of three types of grouping criteria: learner’s personal characteristics, learner’s behaviours, and context information. The instructors can freely select the type, the number, and the weight of grouping criteria, together with other settings such as the number, the size, and the type of learning groups (homogeneous or heterogeneous). Apart from a grouping mechanism, the proposed approach represents a flexible tool to control each learner, and to manage the learning processes from the beginning to the end of collaborative learning activities. In order to evaluate the quality of the implemented group formation algorithm, we compare its Average Intra-cluster Distance (AID) with the one of a random group formation method. The results show a higher effectiveness of the proposed algorithm in forming homogenous and heterogeneous groups compared to the random method.

Cost-effective and lightweight mobile units for MixAR: A comparative trial among different setups

Cultural heritage has arousing the interest of the general public (e.g. tourists), resulting in the increasing number of visitations to archaeological sites. However, many buildings and monuments are severely damaged or completely destroyed, which doesn’t allow to get a full experience of “travelling in time”. Over the years, several Augmented Reality (AR) approaches were proposed to overcome these issues by providing three-dimensional visualization of reconstructed ancient structures in situ. However, most of these systems were made available through heavy and expensive technological bundles. Alternatively, MixAR intends to be a lightweight and cost-effective Mixed Reality system which aims to provide the visualization of virtual ancient buildings reconstructions in situ, properly superimposed and aligned with real-world ruins. This paper proposes and compares different AR mobile units setups to be used in the MixAR system, with low-cost and lightweight requirements in mind, providing different levels of immersion. It was propounded four different mobile units, based on: a laptop computer, a single-board computer (SBC), a tablet and a smartphone, which underwent a set of tests to evaluate their performances. The results show that mobile units based on laptop computer and SBC reached a good overall performance while mobile units based on tablet and smartphone did not meet such a satisfactory result even though they are acceptable for the intended use.

MixAR mobile prototype: visualizing virtually reconstructed ancient structures in situ

Archeology and related areas have a special interest on cultural heritage sites since they provide valuable information about past civilizations. However, the ancient buildings present in these sites are commonly found in an advanced state of degradation which difficult the professional/expert analysis. Virtual reconstructions of such buildings aim to provide a digital insight of how these historical places could have been in ancient times. Moreover, the visualization of such models has been explored by some Augmented Reality (AR) systems capable of providing support to experts. Their compelling and appealing environments have also been applied to promote the social and cultural participation of general public. The existing AR solutions regarding this thematic rarely explore the potential of realism, due to the following lacks: the exploration of mixed environments is usually only supported for indoors or outdoors, not both in the same system; the adaptation of the illumination conditions to the reconstructed structures is rarely addressed causing a decrease of credibility. MixAR [1] is a system concerned with those challenges, aiming to provide the visualization of virtual buildings augmented upon real ruins, allowing soft transitions among its interiors and exteriors and using relighting techniques for a faithful interior illumination, while the user freely moves in a given cultural heritage site, carrying a mobile unit. Regarding the focus of this paper, we intend to report the current state of MixAR mobile unit prototype, which allows visualizing virtual buildings – properly aligned with real-world structures – based on user's location, during outdoor navigation. In order to evaluate the prototype performance, a set of tests were made using virtual models with different complexities.

The quantified-Self and wearable technologies in the workplace: implications and challenges for their implementations

Introduction of technologies in the workplace have led to a dramatic change. These changes have come with an increased capacity to gather data about one’s working performance (i.e. productivity), as well as the capacity to track one’s personal responses (i.e. emotional, physiological, etc.) to this changing workplace environment. This movement of self-monitoring or self-sensing using diverse types of wearable sensors combined with the use of computing has been identified as the Quantified-Self. Miniaturization of sensors, reduction in cost and a non-stop increase in the computer power capacity has led to a panacea of wearables and sensors to track and analyze all types of information. Utilized in the personal sphere to track information, a looming question remains, should employers use the information from the Quantified-Self to track their employees’ performance or well-being in the workplace and will this benefit employees? The aim of the present work is to layout the implications and challenges associated with the use of Quantified-Self information in the workplace. The Quantified-Self movement has enabled people to understand their personal life better by tracking multiple information and signals; such an approach could allow companies to gather knowledge on what drives productivity for their business and/or well-being of their employees. A discussion about the implications of this approach will cover 1) Monitoring health and well-being, 2) Oversight and safety, and 3) Mentoring and training. Challenges will address the question of 1) Privacy and Acceptability, 2) Scalability and 3) Creativity. Even though many questions remain regarding their use in the workplace, wearable technologies and Quantified-Self data in the workplace represent an exciting opportunity for the industry and health and safety practitioners who will be using them.

Pervasive business intelligence platform to improve the quality of decision process in primary and secondary education – A Portuguese case study

Business Intelligence (BI) can be seen as a method that gathers information and data from information systems in order to help companies to be more accurate in their decision-making process. Traditionally BI systems were associated with the use of Data Warehouses (DW). The prime purpose of DW is to serve as a repository that stores all the relevant information required for making the correct decision. The necessity to integrate streaming data became crucial with the need to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the decision process. In primary and secondary education, there is a lack of BI solutions. Due to the schools reality the main purpose of this study is to provide a Pervasive BI solution able to monitoring the schools and student data anywhere and anytime in real-time as well as disseminating the information through ubiquitous devices. The first task consisted in gathering data regarding the different choices made by the student since his enrolment in a certain school year until the end of it. Thereafter a dimensional model was developed in order to be possible building a BI platform. This paper presents the dimensional model, a set of pre-defined indicators, the Pervasive Business Intelligence characteristics and the prototype designed. The main contribution of this study was to offer to the schools a tool that could help them to make accurate decisions in real-time. Data dissemination was achieved through a localized application that can be accessed anywhere and anytime.

A relational algebra approach to ETL modeling

The MAP-i Doctoral Programme in Informatics, of the Universities of Minho, Aveiro and Porto

Vestuário interactivo para desporto e reabilitação

Dissertação de mestrado em Design e Marketing

Gestão e instalação de redes de sensores sem fios (domótica)

Dissertação de mestrado integrado em Engenharia Eletrónica Industrial e Computadores