Hefestos: an intelligent system applied to ubiquitous accessibility

This article proposes Hefestos, an intelligent system applied to ubiquitous accessibility. This model uses ubiquitous computing concepts to manage accessibility resources for people with disabilities. Among the concepts employed, context awareness, user profiles and trails management can be highlighted. The paper proposes an ontology for accessibility and delineates scenarios of its application in everyday life of people with disabilities. Moreover, the implementation of a smart wheelchair prototype and its application in a practical experiment is described. Ten users with a range of disability degrees tried the system and filled out a survey based on the technology acceptance model. This experiment demonstrated the main functionalities and the acceptance of the system. The results showed 96 % of acceptance regarding perceived easy of use and 98 % in perceived usefulness. These results were encouraging and show the potential for implementing Hefestos in real life situations.     

Performance Comparisons Between Thumb-Based and Finger-Based Input on a Small Touch-Screen Under Realistic Variability

The potential benefits of thumb-based touch interaction have not been fully exploited due to its usability problems and performance deterioration. Despite the well-known problems, mobile phone users often prefer thumb-based input method in their daily context of use. Without understanding input performance under realistic variability, design solutions may not address the problems adequately. This research aims to evaluate performance of one-handed thumb-based input compared to cradled finger-based input for the large number of users and varying task conditions. By investigating performance under a range of user- and task-variability, common patterns can be identified to help infer realistic performance in context of use. For this experiment, 259 participants were recruited balanced on gender and age. They performed user testing of moving an icon on a mobile touch-screen. Overall, the one-handed thumb input showed a 30% reduction in throughput compared to the cradled finger-based input, with significant reduction in speed and accuracy. Reduced throughput is attributed to inaccuracy rather than speed. In addition, the partial effects of touch position, dragging direction, and target size were investigated and quantified. In conclusion, performance could maintain constant throughput only for the finger-based input of limited task conditions, when realistic variability was introduced. Also, high variance of throughput for the thumb-based input led to poor conformity to Fitts’s law. The findings have implications for design of thumb-based touch interface to offset performance reduction and characterizing performance measure for thumb-based input method.     

3-D Unitary ESPRIT: Accurate attitude estimation for unmanned aerial vehicles with a hexagon-shaped ESPAR array

Accurate estimation of the attitude of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is crucial for their control and displacement. Errors in the attitude estimate may misuse the limited battery energy of UAVs or even cause an accident. For attitude estimation, proprioceptive sensors such as inertial measurement units (IMUs) are widely applied, but they are susceptible to inertial guidance error. With antenna arrays currently being installed in UAVs for communication with ground base stations, we can take advantage of the array structure in order to improve the estimates of IMUs via data fusion. In this paper, we therefore propose an attitude estimation system based on a hexagon-shaped 7-element electronically steerable parasitic antenna radiator (ESPAR) array. The ESPAR array is well-suited for installment in the UAVs with broad wings and short bodies. Our proposed solution returns an estimation for the pitch and roll based on the inter-element phase delay estimates of the line-of-sight path of the impinging signal over the antenna array. By exploiting the parallel and centrosymmetric structure in the hexagon-shaped ESPAR array, the 3-dimensional Unitary ESPRIT algorithm is applied for phase delay estimation to achieve high accuracy as well as computational efficiency. We devise an attitude estimation algorithm by exploiting the geometrical relationship between the UAV attitude and the estimated phase delays. An analytical closed-form expression of the attitude estimates is obtained by solving the established simultaneous nonlinear equations. Simulations results show the feasibility of our proposed solution for different signal-to-noise ratio levels as well as multipath scenarios.     

Measurement feedback control for a class of feedforward nonlinear systems

We propose a measurement feedback controller for a class of feedforward nonlinear systems under sensor noise. The sensor noise has unknown magnitude, frequency, and phase. Our proposed controller is coupled with a low‐pass filter in such a way that the sensor noise is attenuated. We show that the controlled system results in bounded states whose ultimate bounds are inversely proportional to the minimum frequency of the sensor noise. Our result is further generalized to work in a case where the sensor noise is only required to have a Fourier transform with finite energy. Moreover, if the sensor noise enters only at partial states, depending on the location of the sensor noise, the ultimate bounds of the particular states can be made arbitrarily small via the gain factor of the controller. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An object-based middleware supporting efficient interoperability on a smart home network

This paper proposes a novel object-based home network middleware for supporting the interoperability among home devices and smart grid devices. This middleware provides various types of abstract objects for flexible representation of heterogeneous home devices, which are classified based on their characteristics. It is also flexible enough to allow addition of new protocols and message conversion between different protocols through an abstraction layer, which are not supported by existing home network middlewares so that various protocols can be supported. As a result, it can be utilized to provide the interoperability among a variety of devices from sensors to typical home appliances as well as smart grid devices such as a home electric generator and a battery, which adopt different protocols. In order to demonstrate that home devices and smart grid devices are interoperable through the proposed middleware, we implement applications based on the middleware on a target platform consisting of embedded boards, sensors and laptops for emulation purposes of a home network. According to our emulation, this middleware can provide efficient interoperability among home devices and smart grid devices for future energy efficient home.     

Publishers’ relationships on the web: An examination of how publishers’ websites are causing changes in relations in the book industry

This research, funded by the British National Bibliography Research Fund, examined how publishers’ websites are causing changes in relations in the book industry in order to gain further understanding of the implications of the impact of the Internet on the publishing chain. The paper is set within the context of the development of electronic commerce and how business to consumer commerce is now being overtaken by the activity in business to business trading. Publishers have followed the main business trends in using their websites to develop relationships directly with the consumer, but have been rather slower in developing their business to business activity through the Internet. This study investigated what changes were taking place as a result of current publisher activity on the Web and how these changes were affecting the traditional lines of communication in the book industry. An analysis of a range of consumer publishers’ websites was carried out to see what facilities they were offering both to the general public and to business partners within the industry. Questionnaires and interviews were then conducted to establish how publishers, booksellers and wholesalers were using publishers’ websites and whether these sites were beneficial to the industry as a whole. Facilities found on the websites were examined and analysed in order to determine their usefulness and how they might be developed to aid business to business commerce. Additionally, several issues relating to online sales, changes in sales patterns and changes in working methods were discussed. Although an amount of quantitative data is included in the report, many of the issues raised relied on the perceptions and opinions of practitioners in the book trade.