Sensor networks have seen an exponential growth in the last few years. They involve deploying a large number of small sensing nodes for capturing environmental data. Searching such networks is limited by two major constraints: scalability and precision. We argue that the key to enabling scalable and precise sensor information search is to define an ontology that associates sensor information taxonomy for searching and interpreting raw data streams. We present the motivation and description of the development of the proposed ontology, partial evaluation of the early prototype ontology, a discussion of design and implementation issues, and directions for future research works.
Digital twins (DTs) technology has recently gained attention within the research community due to its potential to help build sustainable smart cities. However, there is a gap in the literature: currently no unified model for city services has been proposed that can guarantee interoperability across cities, capture each city’s unique characteristics, and act as a base for modeling digital twins. This research aims to fill that gap. In this work, we propose the DT-DNA model in which we design a city services digital twin, with the goal of reflecting the real state of development of a city’s services towards enhancing its citizens’ quality of life (QoL). As it was designed using ISO 37120, one of the leading international standards for city services, the model guarantees interoperability and allows for easy comparison of services within and across cities. In order to test our model, we built DT-DNA sequences of services in both Quebec City and Boston and then used a DNA alignment tool to determine the matching percentage between them. Results show that the DT-DNA sequences of services in both cities are 46.5% identical. Ground truth comparisons show a similar result, which provides a preliminary proof-of-concept for the applicability of the proposed model and framework. These results also imply that one city performs better than the other. Therefore, we propose an algorithm to compare cities based on the proposed DT-DNA and, using Boston and Quebec City as a case study, demonstrate that Boston has better services towards enhancing QoL for its citizens.
The recovery of hand functions in post-stroke patients relies on the length of therapy that is available to them. Rehabilitation exercises supervised by occupational therapists are characterized by repetitiveness and a constant increase in intensity. However, due to resource limitations, facilities and time allocated to recovering stroke patients restrict the maximum level of rehabilitation that can be attained. Various efforts have therefore been spent into rehabilitation themes set in virtual environments, sometimes using haptic devices, in order to create affordable stand-alone systems that patients could use at home. This study carries forward in that direction by implementing hapto-virtual reality based exercises for the purposes of hand rehabilitation. In this paper, we present a haptic-based rehabilitation system that can be set in the patient's own house to provide him/her with treatment that is not restricted by time and facilities and that offers continuous evaluation of the patient's improvement
Potential of nonverbal communication as the communication medium between multiuser 3D virtual worlds and real environment are attracting the interest of many researchers around the world. Driven by the motivation, we explored the possibilities of integrating haptic interactions with Linden Lab's multiuser online virtual world, Second Life. We developed an add-on to the Second Life communication channel in order to facilitate emotional feedbacks such as human touch, encouraging pat and comforting hug to the participating users through real-world haptic simulation. These social touch that are fundamental to physical and emotional development in turn can enhance the users interactive and immersive experiences with the virtual social communities in the Second Life. In this paper, we describe the development of a prototype that realizes the aforementioned virtual-real communication through a haptic-jacket system. Some of the potential applications of the proposed approach include remote child caring, stress recovery, distant lover's communication etc.
Obesity rates in the world, especially in the developed countries are alarming. This has forced scientists to consider obesity as an epidemic due to its huge negative consequences on the societies' physical and mental health. Obese Children constitute a large portion of those affected by this epidemic and researchers are striving to find solutions which can curb its spread. Exergames have emerged as promising tools that can help in the fight against obesity because it promotes physical activity through playing. In this paper, we present a mobile-based exergaming system that targets children of different ages and that aims to encourage them to do running and jumping exercises in an enjoyable manner. It currently incorporates 1 game but its modular structure enables to easily accept even more games. The system uses a novel foot interface and a heart monitor that allow interacting with a special game that can adapt to the user's performance. The preliminary evaluations with two children have shown that the system can be an effective tool that engages users into physical activity.
A digital twin is a digital replication of a living or non-living physical entity. By bridging the physical and the virtual worlds, data is transmitted seamlessly allowing the virtual entity to exist simultaneously with the physical entity. A digital twin facilitates the means to monitor, understand, and optimize the functions of the physical entity and provides continuous feedback to improve quality of life and wellbeing of citizens in smart cities. In this research program, we explore the design and development of frameworks, methodologies and methods regarding the convergence of multimedia technologies {AR/VR, AI, IoT, Big Data, Cybersecurity and 5G) towards the digital twin for health care. We address diverse challenges and the open research questions.
The impairment of the fingers is one of the main problems that prevents patients performing their daily activities. Researchers have used virtual environment combined with haptic feedback to improve the strength of the fingers. In this study, we design and implement a cost-effective, light, and easy to use haptic glove that helps patients in their rehabilitation program. The virtual environment are consisted of two exergames namely, squeezing a ball game, and raising a cup game. The system is tested on 20 healthy subjects for four days. Since the preliminary results have shown a general acceptance of the proposed system by the users, we can assume that there is a clear potential for haptic feedback to improve the overall performance of the users.
Leveraging on the recent developments in convolutional neural networks (CNNs), optical flow estimation from adjacent frames has been cast as a learning problem, with performance exceeding traditional approaches. The existing networks always use standard convolutional layers for extracting multi-level features with the fixed kernel size at each level. For enlarging the receptive field, some works introduce dilated convolution operation, which can capture more contextual information and can avoid the loss of motion details. However, these networks lack the ability to adaptively adjust its receptive field size and cannot aggregate multi-scale information with a selective mechanism. To address this problem, in this paper, we introduce selective kernel network into optical flow estimation, which can adaptively select different scale features and adjust their receptive field according to the global information. Specifically, we conduct the selective kernel mechanism on each level of pyramid, which can adaptively select multi-scale feature at each pyramidal level. The extensive analyses are conducted on MPI-Sintel and KITTI datasets to verify the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The experimental results show that our model achieves comparable results with the previous state-of-the-art networks while keeping a small model size.
'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' transform='rotate(23.036 .093 25.536)'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' transform='rotate(45.87 1.273 16.18)'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' transform='rotate(69.945 .996 12.078)'/%3e%3cuse xlink:href='%23a' transform='rotate(20.66 -19.689 31.932)'/%3e%3c/svg%3e)