Special Issue "Select papers from UCAmI 2011 - the 5th International Symposium on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI'11)"
Quicklinks
A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 March 2012)
Special Issue Editors
Guest Editor
Dr. Francisco Moya
School of Computer Science, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Paseo de la Universidad 4, 13071 Ciudad Real, Spain
E-Mail: francisco.moya@uclm.es
Interests: large scale heterogeneous distributed systems; sensor networks; common sense reasoning; networks-on-chip; electronic design automation
Guest Editor
Dr. José Bravo
MAml Research Lab, Castilla La-Mancha University, 13071 Ciudad Real, Spain
Website: http://mami.uclm.es/
E-Mail: jose.bravo@uclm.es
Interests: ubiquitous computing; context aware; RFID; natural interaction; visualization; information mosaics
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The 5th International Symposium on Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI'11) will be held on 6-9 December 2011, in Riviera Maya (Mexico).
Both academia and industry are invited to submit papers about any of the following topics of interest:
- Integrating lightweight and/or mobile devices in AmI environments (telephones, RFID, consumer electronics, sensors, smart devices, etc.)
- Mobile Ad Hoc Networks support for AmI environments for wireless sensor networks (WSNs), MANETs, VANETs, etc., (architectures, protocols, etc.)
- Sensing location and context awareness (context modelling, adaptation, sentient computing, etc.)
- Human-Centric Interfaces for AmI environments
- Middleware support for AmI and ubiquitous computing environments (WSNs, MANET, VANETs, RFID, etc.)
- Artificial intelligence approaches (agents, affective computing, ontologies, semantic reasoning, etc.)
- Applications for AmI environments (e-learning, e-health, Home Automation, e-payment, ticketing, etc.)
- Specific services for AmI (service discovery, security, data delivery, coordination, etc.)
- Communication and radio technologies (NFC, Bluetooth, etc.)
- Quality attributes in AmI applications (real-time, quality of service, fault-tolerance, etc.).
- Software technologies for AmI (frameworks, components, aspect-orientation, service-orientation, software product line, etc.)
Dr. José Bravo
Dr. Francisco Moya
Guest Editors
Submission
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed Open Access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs).
Published Papers (17 papers)
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Received: 21 February 2012; in revised form: 28 February 2012 / Accepted: 29 February 2012 / Published: 7 March 2012
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Abstract: The design and realization of health monitoring applications has attracted the interest of large communities both from industry and academia. Several research challenges have been faced and issues tackled in order to realize effective applications for the management and monitoring of people with chronic diseases, people with disabilities, elderly people. However, there is a lack of efficient tools that enable rapid and possibly cheap realization of reliable health monitoring applications. The paper presents Uranus, a service oriented middleware architecture, which provides basic functions for the integration of different kinds of biomedical sensors. Uranus has also distinguishing characteristics like services for the run-time verification of the correctness of running applications and mechanisms for the recovery from failures. The paper concludes with two case studies as proof of concept.
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Received: 22 February 2012; in revised form: 3 April 2012 / Accepted: 6 April 2012 / Published: 17 April 2012
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Abstract: Modeling and managing correctly the user context in Smart Environments is important to achieve robust and reliable systems. When modeling reality we must take into account its ambiguous nature. Considering the uncertainty and vagueness in context data information it is possible to attain a more precise picture of the environment, thus leading to a more accurate inference process. To achieve these goals we present an ontology that models the ambiguity in intelligent environments and a data fusion and inference process that takes advantage of that extra information to provide better results. Our system can assess the certainty of the captured measurements, discarding the unreliable ones and combining the rest into a unified vision of the current user context. It also models the vagueness of the system, combining it with the uncertainty to obtain a richer inference process.
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Received: 2 March 2012; in revised form: 29 March 2012 / Accepted: 10 April 2012 / Published: 26 April 2012
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Abstract: This paper presents OnRoute, a framework for developing and running ubiquitous software that provides information services to passengers of public transportation, including payment systems and on-route guidance services. To achieve a high level of interoperability, accessibility and context awareness, OnRoute uses the ubiquitous computing paradigm. To guarantee the quality of the software produced, the reliable software principles used in critical contexts, such as automotive systems, are also considered by the framework. The main components of its architecture (run-time, system services, software components and development discipline) and how they are deployed in the transportation network (stations and vehicles) are described in this paper. Finally, to illustrate the use of OnRoute, the development of a guidance service for travellers is explained.
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Received: 5 March 2012; in revised form: 11 April 2012 / Accepted: 25 April 2012 / Published: 30 April 2012
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Abstract: The concept of the information society is now a common one, as opposed to the industrial society that dominated the economy during the last years. It is assumed that all sectors should have access to information and reap its benefits. Elderly people are, in this respect, a major challenge, due to their lack of interest in technological progress and their lack of knowledge regarding the potential benefits that information society technologies might have on their lives. The Naviga Project (An Open and Adaptable Platform for the Elderly and Persons with Disability to Access the Information Society) is a European effort, whose main goal is to design and develop a technological platform allowing elder people and persons with disability to access the internet and the information society. Naviga also allows the creation of services targeted to social networks, mind training and personalized health care. In this paper we focus on the health care and information services designed on the project, the technological platform developed and details of two representative elements, the virtual reality hand rehabilitation and the health information intelligent system.
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Received: 29 February 2012; in revised form: 19 April 2012 / Accepted: 28 April 2012 / Published: 3 May 2012
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Abstract: The presence of smoke is the first symptom of fire; therefore to achieve early fire detection, accurate and quick estimation of the presence of smoke is very important. In this paper we propose an algorithm to detect the presence of smoke using video sequences captured by Internet Protocol (IP) cameras, in which important features of smoke, such as color, motion and growth properties are employed. For an efficient smoke detection in the IP camera platform, a detection algorithm must operate directly in the Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) domain to reduce computational cost, avoiding a complete decoding process required for algorithms that operate in spatial domain. In the proposed algorithm the DCT Inter-transformation technique is used to increase the detection accuracy without inverse DCT operation. In the proposed scheme, firstly the candidate smoke regions are estimated using motion and color smoke properties; next using morphological operations the noise is reduced. Finally the growth properties of the candidate smoke regions are furthermore analyzed through time using the connected component labeling technique. Evaluation results show that a feasible smoke detection method with false negative and false positive error rates approximately equal to 4% and 2%, respectively, is obtained.
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Received: 22 March 2012; in revised form: 16 April 2012 / Accepted: 2 May 2012 / Published: 3 May 2012
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Abstract: This paper is focused on the automatic construction of 3D basic-semantic models of inhabited interiors using laser scanners with the help of RFID technologies. This is an innovative approach, in whose field scarce publications exist. The general strategy consists of carrying out a selective and sequential segmentation from the cloud of points by means of different algorithms which depend on the information that the RFID tags provide. The identification of basic elements of the scene, such as walls, floor, ceiling, windows, doors, tables, chairs and cabinets, and the positioning of their corresponding models can then be calculated. The fusion of both technologies thus allows a simplified 3D semantic indoor model to be obtained. This method has been tested in real scenes under difficult clutter and occlusion conditions, and has yielded promising results.
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Received: 8 March 2012; in revised form: 7 April 2012 / Accepted: 27 April 2012 / Published: 4 May 2012
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Abstract: Determination of (in)activity periods when monitoring human body motion is a mandatory preprocessing step in all human inertial navigation and position analysis applications. Distinction of (in)activity needs to be established in order to allow the system to recompute the calibration parameters of the inertial sensors as well as the Zero Velocity Updates (ZUPT) of inertial navigation. The periodical recomputation of these parameters allows the application to maintain a constant degree of precision. This work presents a comparative study among different well known inertial magnitude-based detectors and proposes a new approach by applying spectrum-based detectors and memory-based detectors. A robust statistical comparison is carried out by the use of an accelerometer and angular rate signal synthesizer that mimics the output of accelerometers and gyroscopes when subjects are performing basic activities of daily life. Theoretical results are verified by testing the algorithms over signals gathered using an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU). Detection accuracy rates of up to 97% are achieved.
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Received: 20 March 2012; in revised form: 27 April 2012 / Accepted: 29 April 2012 / Published: 10 May 2012
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Abstract: Credential-based authorization offers interesting advantages for ubiquitous scenarios involving limited devices such as sensors and personal mobile equipment: the verification can be done locally; it offers a more reduced computational cost than its competitors for issuing, storing, and verification; and it naturally supports rights delegation. The main drawback is the revocation of rights. Revocation requires handling potentially large revocation lists, or using protocols to check the revocation status, bringing extra communication costs not acceptable for sensors and other limited devices. Moreover, the effective revocation consent—considered as a privacy rule in sensitive scenarios—has not been fully addressed. This paper proposes an event-based mechanism empowering a new concept, the sleepyhead credentials, which allows to substitute time constraints and explicit revocation by activating and deactivating authorization rights according to events. Our approach is to integrate this concept in IdM systems in a hybrid model supporting delegation, which can be an interesting alternative for scenarios where revocation of consent and user privacy are critical. The delegation includes a SAML compliant protocol, which we have validated through a proof-of-concept implementation. This article also explains the mathematical model describing the event-based model and offers estimations of the overhead introduced by the system. The paper focus on health care scenarios, where we show the flexibility of the proposed event-based user consent revocation mechanism.
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Received: 19 March 2012; in revised form: 19 April 2012 / Accepted: 28 April 2012 / Published: 10 May 2012
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Abstract: Geo-collaboration is an emerging research area in computer sciences studying the way spatial, geographically referenced information and communication technologies can support collaborative activities. Scenarios in which information associated to its physical location are of paramount importance are often referred as Situated Knowledge Creation scenarios. To date there are few computer systems supporting knowledge creation that explicitly incorporate physical context as part of the knowledge being managed in mobile face-to-face scenarios. This work presents a collaborative software application supporting visually-geo-referenced knowledge creation in mobile working scenarios while the users are interacting face-to-face. The system allows to manage data information associated to specific physical locations for knowledge creation processes in the field, such as urban planning, identifying specific physical locations, territorial management, etc.; using Tablet-PCs and GPS in order to geo-reference data and information. It presents a model for developing mobile applications supporting situated knowledge creation in the field, introducing the requirements for such an application and the functionalities it should have in order to fulfill them. The paper also presents the results of utility and usability evaluations.
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Received: 20 March 2012; in revised form: 30 April 2012 / Accepted: 4 May 2012 / Published: 11 May 2012
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Abstract: The mainstream of research in Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) is devoted to developing intelligent systems for processing the data collected through artificial sensing. Besides, there are other elements that must be considered to foster the adoption of AAL solutions in real environments. In this paper we focus on the problem of designing interfaces among caregivers and AAL systems. We present an alert management tool that supports carers in their task of validating alarms raised by the system. It generates text-based explanations—obtained through an argumentation process—of the causes leading to alarm activation along with graphical sensor information and 3D models, thus offering complementary types of information. Moreover, a guideline to use the tool when validating alerts is also provided. Finally, the functionality of the proposed tool is demonstrated through two real cases of alert.
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Received: 16 March 2012; in revised form: 3 May 2012 / Accepted: 3 May 2012 / Published: 11 May 2012
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Abstract: Current “Internet of Things” concepts point to a future where connected objects gather meaningful information about their environment and share it with other objects and people. In particular, objects embedding Human Machine Interaction (HMI), such as mobile devices and, increasingly, connected vehicles, home appliances, urban interactive infrastructures, etc., may not only be conceived as sources of sensor information, but, through interaction with their users, they can also produce highly valuable context-aware human-generated observations. We believe that the great promise offered by combining and sharing all of the different sources of information available can be realized through the integration of HMI and Semantic Sensor Web technologies. This paper presents a technological framework that harmonizes two of the most influential HMI and Sensor Web initiatives: the W3C’s Multimodal Architecture and Interfaces (MMI) and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) with its semantic extension, respectively. Although the proposed framework is general enough to be applied in a variety of connected objects integrating HMI, a particular development is presented for a connected car scenario where drivers’ observations about the traffic or their environment are shared across the Semantic Sensor Web. For implementation and evaluation purposes an on-board OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) architecture was built, integrating several available HMI, Sensor Web and Semantic Web technologies. A technical performance test and a conceptual validation of the scenario with potential users are reported, with results suggesting the approach is sound.
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Received: 1 April 2012; in revised form: 25 April 2012 / Accepted: 27 April 2012 / Published: 14 May 2012
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Abstract: Effective communication among first responders during response to natural and human-made large-scale catastrophes has increased tremendously during the last decade. However, most efforts to achieve a higher degree of effectiveness in communication lack synergy between the environment and the technology involved to support first responders operations. This article presents a natural and intuitive interface to support Stigmergy; or communication through the environment, based on intuitively marking and retrieving information from the environment with a pointer. A prototype of the system was built and tested in the field, however the pointing activity revealed challenges regarding accuracy due to limitations of the sensors used. The results obtained from these field tests were the basis for this research effort and will have the potential to enable communication through the environment for first responders operating in highly dynamical and inhospitable disaster relief environments.
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Received: 20 March 2012; in revised form: 10 May 2012 / Accepted: 15 May 2012 / Published: 18 May 2012
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Abstract: Technological advances for improving supply chain efficiency present three key challenges for managing goods: tracking, tracing and monitoring (TTM), in order to satisfy the requirements for products such as perishable goods where the European Legislations requires them to ship within a prescribed temperature range to ensure freshness and suitability for consumption. The proposed system integrates RFID for tracking and tracing through a distributed architecture developed for heavy goods vehicles, and the sensors embedded in the SunSPOT platform for monitoring the goods transported based on the concept of the Internet of Things. This paper presents how the Internet of Things is integrated for improving terrestrial logistics offering a comprehensive and flexible architecture, with high scalability, according to the specific needs for reaching an item-level continuous monitoring solution. The major contribution from this work is the optimization of the Embedded Web Services based on RESTful (Web of Things) for the access to TTM services at any time during the transportation of goods. Specifically, it has been extended the monitoring patterns such as observe and blockwise transfer for the requirements from the continuous conditional monitoring, and for the transfer of full inventories and partial ones based on conditional queries. In definitive, this work presents an evolution of the previous TTM solutions, which were limited to trailer identification and environment monitoring, to a solution which is able to provide an exhaustive item-level monitoring, required for several use cases. This exhaustive monitoring has required new communication capabilities through the Web of Things, which has been optimized with the use and improvement of a set of communications patterns.
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Received: 19 March 2012; in revised form: 12 May 2012 / Accepted: 14 May 2012 / Published: 18 May 2012
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Abstract: This paper describes a telematic system based on an intelligent van which is capable of tracing pharmaceutical drugs over delivery routes from a warehouse to pharmacies, without altering carriers’ daily conventional tasks. The intelligent van understands its environment, taking into account its location, the assets and the predefined delivery route; with the capability of reporting incidences to carriers in case of failure according to the established distribution plan. It is a non-intrusive solution which represents a successful experience of using smart environments and an optimized Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) embedded system in a viable way to resolve a real industrial need in the pharmaceutical industry. The combination of deterministic modeling of the indoor vehicle, the implementation of an ad-hoc radiating element and an agile software platform within an overall system architecture leads to a competitive, flexible and scalable solution.
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Received: 8 April 2012; in revised form: 11 May 2012 / Accepted: 22 May 2012 / Published: 25 May 2012
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Abstract: The key idea underlying many Ambient Intelligence (AmI) projects and applications is context awareness, which is based mainly on their capacity to identify users and their locations. The actual computing capacity should remain in the background, in the periphery of our awareness, and should only move to the center if and when necessary. Computing thus becomes ‘invisible’, as it is embedded in the environment and everyday objects. The research project described herein aims to realize an Ambient Intelligence-based environment able to improve users’ quality of life by learning their habits and anticipating their needs. This environment is part of an adaptive, context-aware framework designed to make today’s incompatible heterogeneous domotic systems fully interoperable, not only for connecting sensors and actuators, but for providing comprehensive connections of devices to users. The solution is a middleware architecture based on open and widely recognized standards capable of abstracting the peculiarities of underlying heterogeneous technologies and enabling them to co-exist and interwork, without however eliminating their differences. At the highest level of this infrastructure, the Ambient Intelligence framework, integrated with the domotic sensors, can enable the system to recognize any unusual or dangerous situations and anticipate health problems or special user needs in a technological living environment, such as a house or a public space.
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Received: 29 February 2012; in revised form: 15 May 2012 / Accepted: 17 May 2012 / Published: 25 May 2012
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Abstract: This paper deals with the generation of accurate, dense and coloured 3D models of outdoor scenarios from scanners. This is a challenging research field in which several problems still remain unsolved. In particular, the process of 3D model creation in outdoor scenes may be inefficient if the scene is digitalized under unsuitable technical (specific scanner on-board camera) and environmental (rain, dampness, changing illumination) conditions. We address our research towards the integration of images and range data to produce photorealistic models. Our proposal is based on decoupling the colour integration and geometry reconstruction stages, making them independent and controlled processes. This issue is approached from two different viewpoints. On the one hand, given a complete model (geometry plus texture), we propose a method to modify the original texture provided by the scanner on-board camera with the colour information extracted from external images taken at given moments and under specific environmental conditions. On the other hand, we propose an algorithm to directly assign external images onto the complete geometric model, thus avoiding tedious on-line calibration processes. We present the work conducted on two large Roman archaeological sites dating from the first century A.D., namely, the Theatre of Segobriga and the Fori Porticus of Emerita Augusta, both in Spain. The results obtained demonstrate that our approach could be useful in the digitalization and 3D modelling fields.
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Received: 19 March 2012; in revised form: 18 May 2012 / Accepted: 18 May 2012 / Published: 25 May 2012
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Abstract: Knowledge management is a critical activity for any organization. It has been said to be a differentiating factor and an important source of competitiveness if this knowledge is constructed and shared among its members, thus creating a learning organization. Knowledge construction is critical for any collaborative organizational learning environment. Nowadays workers must perform knowledge creation tasks while in motion, not just in static physical locations; therefore it is also required that knowledge construction activities be performed in ubiquitous scenarios, and supported by mobile and pervasive computational systems. These knowledge creation systems should help people in or outside organizations convert their tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, thus supporting the knowledge construction process. Therefore in our understanding, we consider highly relevant that undergraduate university students learn about the knowledge construction process supported by mobile and ubiquitous computing. This has been a little explored issue in this field. This paper presents the design, implementation, and an evaluation of a system called MCKC for Mobile Collaborative Knowledge Construction, supporting collaborative face-to-face tacit knowledge construction and sharing in ubiquitous scenarios. The MCKC system can be used by undergraduate students to learn how to construct knowledge, allowing them anytime and anywhere to create, make explicit and share their knowledge with their co-learners, using visual metaphors, gestures and sketches to implement the human-computer interface of mobile devices (PDAs).
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Last update: 21 March 2012
