A review on vision techniques applied to Human Behaviour Analysis for Ambient-Assisted Living

Human Behaviour Analysis (HBA) is more and more being of interest for computer vision and artificial intelligence researchers. Its main application areas, like Video Surveillance and Ambient-Assisted Living (AAL), have been in great demand in recent years. This paper provides a review on HBA for AAL and ageing in place purposes focusing specially on vision techniques. First, a clearly defined taxonomy is presented in order to classify the reviewed works, which are consequently presented following a bottom-up abstraction and complexity order. At the motion level, pose and gaze estimation as well as basic human movement recognition are covered. Next, the mainly used action and activity recognition approaches are presented with examples of recent research works. Increasing the degree of semantics and the time interval involved in the HBA, finally the behaviour level is reached. Furthermore, useful tools and datasets are analysed in order to provide help for initiating projects.     

Multi‐responsive polymeric microcontainers for potential biomedical applications: synthesis and functionality evaluation

Temperature and pH responsive poly(N‐isopropylacrylamide‐co‐methacrylic acid) (P(NIPAAm‐co‐MAA)) microcontainers with encapsulated magnetic nanoparticles in the shell were prepared by a two‐stage distillation precipitation polymerization. PMAA@Fe₃O₄/P(NIPAAm‐co‐MAA) core–shell nanoparticles were synthesized by the second‐stage polymerization of NIPAAm, MAA and N, N′‐methylenebisacrylamide as crosslinker in the presence of magnetic nanoparticles and PMAA as core. These novel triple‐functional microcontainers were prepared by selective removal of the PMAA core in water. Daunorubicin hydrochloride (DNR) was loaded into the microcontainers and the release profile was studied by UV–visible spectroscopy. The synthesized nanostructures were characterized with transmission and scanning electron microscopy, X‐ray diffraction and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The magnetic properties were evaluated by vibrating sample magnetometry. The shrink and swelling behavior was studied by dynamic light scattering. Copyright © 2012 Society of Chemical Industry     

Theoretical investigation of polymers near surface of various molecular weights,architecture and external parameters by mean-field variable-density model

We extend our recently developed numerical self-consistent mean-field method in order to investigate polydisperse polymer near surfaces and polymer brushes of variable density in the interfacial region. The system studied is melt polypropylene of various architectures (linear or star) and various molecular weights (monodisperse or polydisperse) under constant external pressure. Our main goal is to systematically study the mechanical properties of interfacial systems between solid surfaces and polymer melts. The mechanical properties and especially the fracture dynamics are investigated by a kinetic Monte Carlo simulation. The findings are supported and compared to several structural properties of the macromolecular interfacial system. Our results are in accordance to expected behavior and experimental data.     

Validating Operator Event Sequence Diagrams: The case of an automated vehicle to human driver handovers

Predicting what drivers will do as vehicle control is handed over to them from automation is a relatively new challenge for the motor vehicle industry. Operator Event Sequence Diagrams (OESDs) offer a way of modeling the interactions between the driver and vehicle automation in the handover of control. In this paper, two studies are presented in which a range of handover strategies are tested. The anticipated driver strategies were modeled using OESDs to serve as predictions of driver behavior. Drivers were then observed in two separate studies: (1) using a Lower-Fidelity (vehicle seat and controls) simulator and (2) using a Higher-Fidelity (whole vehicle) simulator. Driver behavior during a takeover task was categorized according to the signal detection paradigm into hits, misses, false alarms, and correct rejections. The results showed that for all strategies in both sets of studies, the median criterion for validity was exceeded ( > 0.8), suggesting that OESDs made good predictions of driver behavior during the handover of the vehicle from automation to manual control.     

Serverless streaming for emerging media: towards 5G network-driven cost optimization

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Immersive 3D media is an emerging type of media that captures, encodes and reconstructs the 3D appearance of people and objects, with applications in...     

Developing an integrated sustainability and resilience framework of indicators for the assessment of low-carbon energy technologies at the local level

Sustainability indicators have been broadly used to assess energy technologies both at the national and local levels. However, very few studies have addressed the issue of resilience of energy technologies. Moreover, there is a lack of an integrated framework that combines both sustainability and resilience indicators for the assessment of energy technologies. The aim of this paper is to present the development of an integrated framework of sustainability and resilience indicators for the assessment of low-carbon energy technologies at the local level in Europe. The selection of indicators is based on a modified ‘3S’ approach, composed of literature review, self-validation, scientific validation, and social validation. The study incorporates local stakeholders’ feedback on the selection and validation of evaluation criteria based on a European survey. The vast majority of respondents approved and validated the indicators that were selected through the internal and experts’ validation steps.