Control architecture for human-robot integration: application to a robotic wheelchair.

Completely autonomous performance of a mobile robot within noncontrolled and dynamic environments is not possible yet due to different reasons including environment uncertainty, sensor/software robustness, limited robotic abilities, etc. But in assistant applications in which a human is always present, she/he can make up for the lack of robot autonomy by helping it when needed. In this paper, the authors propose human-robot integration as a mechanism to augment/improve the robot autonomy in daily scenarios. Through the human-robot-integration concept, the authors take a further step in the typical human-robot relation, since they consider her/him as a constituent part of the human-robot system, which takes full advantage of the sum of their abilities. In order to materialize this human integration into the system, they present a control architecture, called architecture for human-robot integration, which enables her/him from a high decisional level, i.e., deliberating a plan, to a physical low level, i.e., opening a door. The presented control architecture has been implemented to test the human-robot integration on a real robotic application. In particular, several real experiences have been conducted on a robotic wheelchair aimed to provide mobility to elderly people.     

Control Architecture for Human–Robot Integration: Application to a Robotic Wheelchair

Completely autonomous performance of a mobile robot within noncontrolled and dynamic environments is not possible yet due to different reasons including environment uncertainty, sensor/software robustness, limited robotic abilities, etc. But in assistant applications in which a human is always present, she/he can make up for the lack of robot autonomy by helping it when needed. In this paper, the authors propose human–robot integration as a mechanism to augment/improve the robot autonomy in daily scenarios. Through the human–robot-integration concept, the authors take a further step in the typical human–robot relation, since they consider her/him as a constituent part of the human–robot system, which takes full advantage of the sum of their abilities. In order to materialize this human integration into the system, they present a control architecture, called architecture for human–robot integration, which enables her/him from a high decisional level, i.e., deliberating a plan, to a physical low level, i.e., opening a door. The presented control architecture has been implemented to test the human–robot integration on a real robotic application. In particular, several real experiences have been conducted on a robotic wheelchair aimed to provide mobility to elderly people.     

A reusable simulation model to evaluate the effects of walk-in for diagnostic examinations

Enabling patients to walk in for their diagnostic examination without an appointment has considerable potential in terms of quality of care, patient service, and system efficiency. We present a model to evaluate the effect of implementing a combined walk-in and appointment system, offering appointments to all patients preferring or strictly requiring these, while enabling all other patients to walk in. In a combined system, appointments can be scheduled in periods with low walk-in demand to counterbalance the possible high variability in walk-in arrival rates. We develop a discrete event simulation model, combined with an intelligent algorithmic methodology for appointment schedule optimization, for evaluating the implementation of a combined walk-in and appointment system for diagnostic examinations. Our simulation model is reusable: its component-based structure and generic underlying logic enable it to automatically represent any type of diagnostic facility, for which it can then evaluate the effect of implementing a combined walk-in and appointment system. Applying this approach, we quantitatively investigate the impact of implementing a combined walk-in and appointment system for CT-scans, performing a case study at the Academic Medical Center (AMC) Amsterdam. Inspired by the results, the AMC CT-facility has implemented a combined walk-in and appointment system, thereby shortening patients’ diagnostic trajectories, and decreasing the number of required hospital visits for many patients.     

Naomi Ehrich Leonard's School of Collaboration

Leonard's talent lies in creatively exploring solutions to control problems through combining diverse expertise in such areas as mechanics, mathematics, computer science, and robotics with an interest in biology, oceanography, and ecology. Most recently, she has been organizing groups of robotic underwater vehicles to create an adaptive sensor network. Leonard's work, characterized by an aptitude to delve into areas of study apart from her own engineering expertise, reflects her ability to collaborate with scientists from other fields, explore complex problems, and do sophisticated work that offers remarkable potential for applications outside its immediate arena.     

Telemonitoring of patients at home: a software agent approach

To address the issue of the increasing social, economical and medical needs of maintaining at home people in loss of autonomy while preserving privacy and quality of life, the authors present a software agent based telemonitoring and alarm raising system. The article describes the overall architecture, the various components of the model, and the methodology that has been used. It specifically addresses the issue of reflecting in the object oriented model of the system various dimensions including: the physical world of in-home bio-signal sensors, the numerical world of software agents and Internet-related technologies, and the medical and social worlds of patients, physicians and caregivers. In the model, the main stream of information goes from the biophysical world of patients at home to the socio-medical world of carers through a chain of devices including in-home sensors, local area network, home computer, remote server, and carers' computers. Each device hosts software agents with different levels of knowledge and complexity. Internet and Java technologies provide the building blocks of the designed telemonitoring software. Laboratory experiments have been realized using a fully equipped 'smart' demonstration home for telecare. The study takes place into a more general research project on 'smart' homes for telecare conducted at the Hospital Centre of Grenoble, France.     

How Helen Keller used syntactic semantics to escape from a Chinese Room

A computer can come to understand natural language the same way Helen Keller did: by using “syntactic semantics”—a theory of how syntax can suffice for semantics, i.e., how semantics for natural language can be provided by means of computational symbol manipulation. This essay considers real-life approximations of Chinese Rooms, focusing on Helen Keller’s experiences growing up deaf and blind, locked in a sort of Chinese Room yet learning how to communicate with the outside world. Using the SNePS computational knowledge-representation system, the essay analyzes Keller’s belief that learning that “everything has a name” was the key to her success, enabling her to “partition” her mental concepts into mental representations of: words, objects, and the naming relations between them. It next looks at Herbert Terrace’s theory of naming, which is akin to Keller’s, and which only humans are supposed to be capable of. The essay suggests that computers at least, and perhaps non-human primates, are also capable of this kind of naming.

Into the Abstract

Karin Kuhlmann earned a living for 25 years as a commercial artist in the analog world of the advertising industry. When the computer arrived in her life, she first used it for her job, but soon discovered the creative potential of this new artistic tool.     

POSSIBILISTIC ACTIVITY RECOGNITION IN SMART HOMES FOR COGNITIVELY IMPAIRED PEOPLE

In order to maintain and improve the quality of life in the homes of people with dementia, we must elaborate assistive technologies that will alleviate the effects of cognitive decline, such as those erroneous behaviors associated with carrying on activities of daily living (ADL). In order to provide adequate assistive services at the opportune moment, it is necessary to recognize the occupant behavior from sensor events of the smart home. To address this challenge, this paper presents a formal model of activity recognition in smart homes based on possibility theory and environmental contexts. This activity recognition model is able to take into account coherent and erroneous behaviors that may result from the cognitive decline of the occupant. An implementation of this model was validated in a smart home laboratory with valid sensor data from coherent and erroneous realizations of an ADL scenario.     

The influence of empathy in human–robot relations

The idea of robotic companions capable of establishing meaningful relationships with humans remains far from being accomplished. To achieve this, robots must interact with people in natural ways, employing social mechanisms that people use while interacting with each other. One such mechanism is empathy, often seen as the basis of social cooperation and prosocial behaviour. We argue that artificial companions capable of behaving in an empathic manner, which involves the capacity to recognise another's affect and respond appropriately, are more successful at establishing and maintaining a positive relationship with users. This paper presents a study where an autonomous robot with empathic capabilities acts as a social companion to two players in a chess game. The robot reacts to the moves played on the chessboard by displaying several facial expressions and verbal utterances, showing empathic behaviours towards one player and behaving neutrally towards the other. Quantitative and qualitative results of 31 participants indicate that users towards whom the robot behaved empathically perceived the robot as friendlier, which supports our hypothesis that empathy plays a key role in human–robot interaction.     

Reinforcement learning based compliance control of a robotic walk assist device

ABSTRACT

Millions of people around the globe have to deal with walking disability. Robotic walk assist devices can help people with walking disabilities, especially those with weak legs. However, safety, cost, efficiency and user friendliness are some of the key challenges. For robotic walk assist devices, light weight structure and energy efficient design as well as optimal control are vitally important. In addition, compliance control can help to improve the safety of such devices as well as contribute to their user friendliness. In this paper, an optimal adaptive compliance control is proposed for a Robotic walk assist device. The suggested scheme is based on bio-inspired reinforcement learning. It is completely dynamic-model-free scheme and employs joint position and velocity feedback as well as sensed joint torque (applied by user during walk) for compliance control. The efficiency of the controller is tested in simulation on a robotic walk assisting device model.     

Design and evaluation of a smart home voice interface for the elderly: acceptability and objection aspects

Smart homes equipped with ambient intelligence technology constitute a promising direction to enable the growing number of elderly to continue to live in their own home as long as possible. However, this calls for technological solutions that suit their specific needs and capabilities. The Sweet-Home project aims at developing a new user friendly technology for home automation based on voice command. This paper reports a user evaluation assessing the acceptance and fear of this new technology. Eight healthy persons between 71 and 88 years old, 7 relatives (child, grandchild or friend) and 3 professional carers participated in a user evaluation. During about 45 min, the persons were questioned in co-discovery in the Domus smart home alternating between interview and wizard of Oz periods followed by a debriefing. The experience aimed at testing four important aspects of the project: voice command, communication with the outside world, domotics system interrupting a person’s activity, and electronic agenda. Voice interface appeared to have a great potential to ease daily living for elderly and frail persons and would be better accepted than more intrusive solutions. By considering still healthy and independent elderly people in the user evaluation, an interesting finding that came up is their overall acceptance provided the system does not drive them to a lazy lifestyle by taking control of everything. This particular fear must be addressed for the development of smart homes that support daily living by giving them more ability to control rather than putting them away from the daily routine.     

Recovering from a lost digital wallet: A smart cards perspective extended abstract

Multi-application smart cards enable a user to potentially have a diverse set of applications on her smart card. The growing trend of services convergence fuelled by Near Field Communication and smart phones has made multi-application smart cards a tangible reality. In such an environment, cardholders might have a number of applications on their smart cards and if a card is lost, all of the applications would be lost with it. In addition, consumers might decide to upgrade their smart cards and require a seamless and secure framework to migrate their applications from the old smart card to the new one. Currently, the recovery of a smart card-based service might take from a day to a week at best as each of the lost cards can only be replaced by the respective card issuer, during which time the card issuer might lose business from the user because she is not able to access the provisioned services. Similarly, there is at present no migration mechanism proposed for smart card applications. The proposed framework in this paper enables a user to acquire a new smart card as she desires and then migrate/restore all of her applications onto it—allowing her to recover from her lost digital wallet in a secure, efficient, seamless and ubiquitous manner.     

Large-dimension image clustering by means of fragmentary synchronization in chaotic systems

The paper describes chaotic neural network improvements to enhance the quality of n-dimensional image clustering. New synchronization type—cluster fragmentary synchronization was found. To reveal fragmentary synchronization a new method is proposed. Benderskaya Elena Nikolaevna was born in 1969. She graduated from Automation and Computer Systems department of the St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University in 1993. In 1996 she received her candidate’s degree in the field of mathematical and computer modeling. Since 1996, she delivers lectures at the Faculty of computer science, SPbSPU. Her scientific interests include different aspects of artificial intelligence, namely, neural networks and adjacent fields (pattern recognition, fuzzy logic, evolution computations, and synergetics). She is the winner of the Informica 2006 All-Russian Grant Contest (FGU GNII ITT)—a contest between the leaders of scientific teams working in the field of telecommunication technology. Zhukova Sofya Vitalyevna was born in 1981. She graduated from Automation and Computer Systems department of St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University in 2004. In 2007, under E.N. Benderskaya’s supervision she defended her PhD thesis in the field of system analysis, control, and information processing (informatics). Since 2008 she holds the appointment of associate professor at the Graduate School of Management, St. Petersburg State University. Her scientific interests include control theory, internet technologies, self-organization theory, the theory of nonlinear systems, and the theory of neural networks. She was awarded a grant from the Government of the Russian Federation as a result of the All-Russia Contest of 2006–2007 for Postgraduates.     

Trapped with Robots

Long-time participants in AAAI and IJCAI (International Joint Conference on AI) robotics competitions will surely remember Kate Murphy. Kate would accompany her mother, Robin, and help her demonstrate rescue robots in those events' early days. Declared the unofficial mascot of many teams, Kate also had an onstage role as the "rescue victim" in many of her mom's demos, something she wrote about in a short book chapter she published, at age 12, and which we reproduce here with the kind permission of Academic Press: a tribute in her own words to this delightful young woman who helped make the robotics competitions a success, in her own inimitable way. Kate passed away on 23 January 2005 from complications of a kidney defect, a tragic loss not just to her family and friends but to all of us who remember her backstage warmth, wit, and enthusiasm.     

Multimedia camp empowers disabled kids

Creative and artistic exploration is an important element of childhood development. Jutta Treviranus saw how important drawing, painting, dancing, and making music were to her five year old daughter, and she realized that some of the physically disabled children she worked with at the Hugh MacMillan Rehabilitation Centre in Toronto, Ontario, were missing out on an important aspect of development. As a specialist in microcomputer applications, she also knew that computer technology-specifically art, music, multimedia, virtual reality applications and input devices-has evolved to the point where it can fill that gap. The result was a nine-week summer day camp where kids and adults whose disabilities prevent them from holding a crayon or playing a musical instrument learned to create art and music. Indeed, children as young as three years old could (with a little help) create their own multimedia presentations     

A hybrid setup for a hybrid scenario: combining heuristics for the home health care problem

Home health care, i.e. visiting and nursing patients in their homes, is a growing sector in the medical service business. From a staff rostering point of view, the problem is to find a feasible working plan for all nurses that has to respect a variety of hard and soft constraints, and preferences. Additionally, home health care problems contain a routing component: a nurse must be able to visit her patients in a given roster using a car or public transport. It is desired to design rosters that consider both, the staff rostering and vehicle routing components while minimizing transportation costs and maximizing satisfaction of patients and nurses.     

A cross-layer SSO solution for federating access to kerberized services in the eduroam/DAMe network

Eduroam has become one of the main examples of network federations around the world, where hundred of institutions allow roaming end users to access the local network if they belong to any other eduroam member institution. In this context, this paper proposes how, once the end user is authenticated by the network, she can access additional federated application services (beyond the web) by means of Kerberos, without deploying additional cross-realm infrastructures. With the support of existing eduroam architecture, this proposal prevents the end user from being fully authenticated by her home institution again to access the application services, which do not need to be modified. Finally, optional advanced authorization can be used to provide added value services to end users.     

An evidential fusion approach for activity recognition in ambient intelligence environments

With the growing emergence of ambient intelligence, ubiquitous computing, sensor networks and wireless networking technologies, “ubiquitous networked robotics” is becoming an active research domain of intelligent autonomous systems. It targets new innovative applications in which robotic systems will become part of these networks of artifacts to provide novel capabilities and various assistive services anywhere and anytime, such as healthcare and monitoring services for elderly in Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) environments. Situation recognition, in general, and activity recognition, in particular, provide an added value on the contextual information that can help the ubiquitous networked robot to autonomously provide the best service that meet the needs of the elderly. Dempster–Shafer theory of evidence and its derivatives are an efficient tool to handle uncertainty and incompleteness in smart homes and ubiquitous computing environments. However, their combination rules yield counter-intuitive results in high conflicting activities. In this paper, we propose a new approach to support conflict resolution in activity recognition in AAL environments. This approach is based on a new mapping for conflict evidential fusion to increase the efficiency and accuracy of activity recognition. It gives intuitive interpretation for combining multiple sources in all conflicting situations. The proposed approach, evaluated on a real world smart home dataset, achieves 78% of accuracy in activity recognition. The obtained results outperform those obtained with the existing combination rules.     

Towards privacy-driven design of a dynamic carpooling system

Dynamic carpooling (also known as instant or ad-hoc ridesharing) is a service that arranges one-time shared rides on very short notice. This type of carpooling generally makes use of three recent technological advances: (i) navigation devices to determine a driver’s route and arrange the shared ride; (ii) smartphones for a traveller to request a ride from wherever she happens to be; and (iii) social networks to establish trust between drivers and passengers. However, the mobiquitous environment in which dynamic carpooling is expected to operate raises several privacy issues. Among all the personal identifiable information, learning the location of an individual is one of the greatest threats against her privacy. For instance, the spatio-temporal data of an individual can be used to infer the location of her home and workplace, to trace her movements and habits, to learn information about her centre of interests or even to detect a change from her usual behaviour. Therefore, preserving location privacy is a major issue to be able to leverage the possibilities offered by dynamic carpooling. In this paper we use the principles of privacy-by-design to integrate the privacy aspect in the design of dynamic carpooling, henceforth increasing its public (and political) acceptability and trust.     

State of the art of smart homes

In this paper we present a review of the state of the art of smart homes. We will first look at the research work related to smart homes from various view points; first in the view point of specific techniques such as smart homes that utilize computer vision based techniques, smart homes that utilize audio-based techniques and then smart homes that utilize multimodal techniques. Then we look at it from the view point of specific applications of smart homes such as eldercare and childcare applications, energy efficiency applications and finally in the research directions of multimedia retrieval for ubiquitous environments. We will summarize the smart homes based research into these two categories. In the survey we found out that some well-known smart home applications like video based security applications has seen the maturity in terms of new research directions while some topics like smart homes for energy efficiency and video summarization are gaining momentum.