DOGeye: Controlling your home with eye interaction

Nowadays home automation, with its increased availability, reliability and with its ever reducing costs is gaining momentum and is starting to become a viable solution for enabling people with disabilities to autonomously interact with their homes and to better communicate with other people. However, especially for people with severe mobility impairments, there is still a lack of tools and interfaces for effective control and interaction with home automation systems, and general-purpose solutions are seldom applicable due to the complexity, asynchronicity, time dependent behavior, and safety concerns typical of the home environment. This paper focuses on user-environment interfaces based on the eye tracking technology, which often is the only viable interaction modality for users as such. We propose an eye-based interface tackling the specific requirements of smart environments, already outlined in a public Recommendation issued by the COGAIN European Network of Excellence. The proposed interface has been implemented as a software prototype based on the ETU universal driver, thus being potentially able to run on a variety of eye trackers, and it is compatible with a wide set of smart home technologies, handled by the Domotic OSGi Gateway. A first interface evaluation, with user testing sessions, has been carried and results show that the interface is quite effective and usable without discomfort by people with almost regular eye movement control.     

基于蓝牙通讯的智能家居红外控制系统的实现

蓝牙技术作为一种在2.4GHz无线基础上新发展起来的电缆置换技术,由于其全球统一的标准性、数据传输方面的优越性、自动组网能力、低功耗、低成本和高安全性等特点,已经得到广泛认同。使用蓝牙技术实现家中各个房间之间的通讯,用红外技术实现对家中各种红外家电的统一红外控制,两种技术相结合构建智能家电控制系统,通过蓝牙红外中继器控制实现蓝牙通讯信号到红外控制信号的转换,从而实现对红外家居设备的统一管理。     

It’s Time to End Single-Family Zoning

Abstract

Local planning in the United States is unique in the amount of land it reserves for detached single-family homes. This privileging of single-family homes, normally called R1 zoning, exacerbates inequality and undermines efficiency. R1’s origins are unpleasant: Stained by explicitly classist and implicitly racist motivations, R1 today continues to promote exclusion. It makes it harder for people to access high-opportunity places, and in expensive regions it contributes to shortages of housing, thereby benefiting homeowners at the expense of renters and forcing many housing consumers to spend more on housing. Stacked against these drawbacks, moreover, are a series of only weak arguments in R1’s favor about preferences, aesthetics, and a single-family way of life. We demonstrate that these pro-R1 concerns are either specious, or can be addressed in ways less socially harmful than R1. Given the strong arguments against R1 and the weak arguments for it, we contend planners should work to abolish R1 single-family zoning.     

Costs of a more spacious home after remodelling by hermit crabs

Architectural creations occur throughout the animal kingdom, with invertebrates and vertebrates building structures such as homes to maximize their Darwinian fitness. Animal architects face many trade-offs in building optimally designed structures. But what about animals that do not build, and those that only remodel the original creations of others: do such secondary architects face similar trade-offs? Recent evidence has revealed that hermit crabs—animals well known for opportunistically moving into remnant gastropod shells—can also act as secondary architects, remodelling the shells they inherit from gastropods. Remodelling has only been found among terrestrial hermits (Coenobita spp.), not marine hermits. Here we investigate the potential trade-offs Coenobita compressus faces from remodelling by subjecting its remodelled and unremodelled homes to controlled engineering crush tests, which parallel the homes being crushed by predators. While remodelled homes are significantly more spacious and lightweight than unremodelled homes, we find that the homes attain these beneficial qualities at a cost: a reduced resistance to being crushed. Hermit crabs may therefore only remodel their homes to thresholds set by the bite force of their predators. Our results suggest that, like primary animal architects, which face trade-offs when optimizing architectural designs, secondary animal architects face trade-offs when remodelling such designs.     

Mandir and visa status: purity,auspiciousness and hindu homes in the usa

Mandirs are an important part of first generation Hindu homes of immigrants from India living in the USA who adhere to the essential Hindu principles of purity and auspiciousness in the mandir’s placement and worship in their homes. This paper will argue that visa status of the immigrants plays an important role in the way these two principles of purity and auspiciousness are practiced in a diasporic setting. While the immigrants are on temporary visas with unstable jobs, the purity and auspiciousness of the mandir is negotiated within restricted spaces inside rented apartments; however, as immigrants become permanent residents and independent homeowners, they execute more control in ensuring the purity and auspiciousness of the mandir through architectural changes inside the house. The focus of this paper is not to show the two terms of auspiciousness or purity as binary opposites or as encompassing one or the other. Rather, the concentration of this paper is on highlighting the way immigrants negotiate the purity of the mandir in each stage of the immigration process—from temporary to permanent residency—in order to ensure the auspiciousness of the house.     

Variations of formaldehyde and VOC levels during 3 years in new and older homes

Indoor air organic compounds were continuously monitored during 3 years in new and older homes which were voluntarily selected throughout countries. The levels of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the new homes decreased markedly after 1 year, and steady emissions of VOCs were obtained in the initial months. Formaldehyde and a-pinene related to wooden materials need a longer flushing period than the other compounds in the new homes. The levels of the indoor air organic compounds in the older homes showed no significant fluctuation during the 3-year period. Decreases of the indoor-produced compounds in the new homes did not depend upon the ventilation systems. The results indicate that the indoor-produced compounds in the new homes will be more influenced by the aging decreases of emission source strengths than ventilation systems. The quantitative information on the trend of the indoor air organic compound levels will be useful for the risk assessment of indoor exposure to those compounds, and also for Japanese IAQ guidelines. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The initial levels of VOCs in the new homes decreased dramatically and were close to the mean values for the older homes after one year. The results suggest that steady emissions of VOCs are obtained within initial months. However, formaldehyde and a-pinene did not follow the trend for VOCs, particularly in the wooden framed houses. The results tend to suggest that formaldehyde and a-pinene related to wooden materials will need more long a flushing period than other compounds in the new homes. Decreasing tendency of indoor air organic compound levels in the new homes did not appear to show any dependency upon the ventilation systems over the whole period. Absence of data for ventilation rates in the houses dose not permit interpretation of the relation between ventilation rates and indoor air organic compound levels with statistical certainty, but the results suggest that indoor air organic compound levels in the homes will be more influenced by emission source strengths than ventilation systems. The levels of indoor air organic compounds in the new homes are sufficiently decreased according to the ageing decreases of organic compounds when the home is ventilated with adequate quantities.     

房车的再设计与再制造

本文以房车产业为例,从产品的再设计与再制造的角度出发,探讨在当今工业生产背景下,工业产品的生产如何能够适应社会与环境需求,并用再设计与再制造的协同优势完成对该产品的应用研究.     

Context-aware resource management in multi-inhabitant smart homes: A framework based on Nash -learning

A smart home aims at building intelligent automation with a goal to provide its inhabitants with maximum possible comfort, minimum resource consumption and thus reduced cost of home maintenance. ‘Context Awareness’ is perhaps the most salient feature of such an intelligent environment. An inhabitant’s mobility and activities play a significant role in defining his/her contexts in and around the home. Although there exists an optimal algorithm for location and activity tracking of a single inhabitant, the correlation and dependence between multiple inhabitants’ contexts within the same environment make the location and activity tracking more challenging. In this paper, we first prove that the optimal location prediction across multiple inhabitants in smart homes is an NP-hard problem. Next, to capture the correlation and interactions between different inhabitants’ movements (and hence activities), we develop a novel framework based on a game theoretic, Nash H-learning approach that attempts to minimize the joint location uncertainty of inhabitants. Our framework achieves a Nash equilibrium such that no inhabitant is given preference over others. This results in more accurate prediction of contexts and more adaptive control of automated devices, thus leading to a mobility-aware resource (say, energy) management scheme in multi-inhabitant smart homes. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed framework is capable of adaptively controlling a smart environment, significantly reduces energy consumption and enhances the comfort of the inhabitants.     

The design of smart homes for people with dementia—user-interface aspects

This paper reports on the user requirements analysis, design and evaluation of smart home solutions for people with dementia. In order to be appropriate for people with dementia, smart home technologies should keep interaction with users to a minimum. In the work presented in this paper, discussions with carers, as well as a more formal user-survey, provided a good understanding of the issues that are faced by this group, and useful indications of potential design solutions. This preliminary survey work led to a design approach that used carer emulation, familiarity of appearance, incorporation of verbal prompts and reminders, and careful user-monitoring, to achieve effective devices. This design approach is illustrated through several examples of specific designs. Evaluations of stand-alone systems were carried out prior to smart home installation, and illustrated the complex interface that exists between assistive technology and people with dementia.