Nomadic Devices Research Articles

Usological Turn in Archiving, Curating and Educating: The Case of Arte Útil

Since its inception in 2013, the Arte Útil archive has become a collective steadily expanding as a tool for research and a resource for social practitioners. The archive is available for consultation at the website and consists of a growing database of around three hundred case studies that use art as a tool for societal change. It provides artistic strategies, a historical perspective, and a nexus between theory and praxis, besides being a platform to connect artistic projects and “users” from different geographies and contexts. Overall, it has become a nomadic pedagogical device able to trigger the discussion and the analysis of socially engaged art practice, its nature and its context involving not just artists but social agents and communities. As co-curators of the archive and educators, we interrogated ourselves regarding if curating as a social practice could expand the notion of education. Could we embrace the methodology of social practice to curate and generate pedagogical conditions fostering sustainability? Could we go beyond the conventional spaces and dynamics of academia? Could we integrate concepts like co-authorship and co-curating to cross from the arts to collective learning environments? How do we relate with the archive in other local contexts? In the last five years, we have implemented an evolving methodology that addresses all these questions, activating the Arte Útil archive as a pedagogical catalyst. The archive allowed collective experimentation and became a tool to infiltrate social practice both in the academic domain and galleries and museums’ educational ecosystems. In this article, we will analyse two different examples as case studies: from a research and artistic environment, a conversation with Onur Yıldız and Naz Kocadere, co-authors of “Art in use: case studies in Turkey” in May 2018, from a two-day workshop organised in collaboration with the Office of Useful Art at SALT Galata, Istanbul (TR); and from an educational perspective, the recent curriculum developed as part of the International Master Artists Educator (iMAE) in ArtEZ, Armhen (NL).

Evaluation of Imminent Take-Over Requests With Real Automation on a Test Track.

Investigating take-over, driving, non-driving related task (NDRT) performance, and trust of conditionally automated vehicles (AVs) in critical transitions on a test track. Most experimental results addressing driver take-over were obtained in simulators. The presented experiment aimed at validating relevant findings while uncovering potential effects of motion cues and real risk. Twenty-two participants responded to four critical transitions on a test track. Non-driving related task modality (reading on a handheld device vs. auditory) and take-over timing (cognitive load) were varied on two levels. We evaluated take-over and NDRT performance as well as gaze behavior. Further, trust and workload were assessed with scales and interviews. Reaction times were significantly faster than in simulator studies. Further, reaction times were only barely affected by varying visual, physical, or cognitive load. Post-take-over control was significantly degraded with the handheld device. Experiencing the system reduced participants' distrust, and distrusting participants monitored the system longer and more frequently. NDRTs on a handheld device resulted in more safety-critical situations. The results confirm that take-over performance is mainly influenced by visual-cognitive load, while physical load did not significantly affect responses. Future take-over request (TOR) studies may investigate situation awareness and post-take-over control rather than reaction times only. Trust and distrust can be considered as different dimensions in AV research. Conditionally AVs should offer dedicated interfaces for NDRTs to provide an alternative to using nomadic devices. These interfaces should be designed in a way to maintain drivers' situation awareness. This paper presents a test track experiment addressing conditionally automated driving systems. Twenty-two participants responded to critical TORs, where we varied NDRT modality and take-over timing. In addition, we assessed trust and workload with standardized scales and interviews.

Magnetophoresis-Assisted Capillary Assembly: A Versatile Approach for Fabricating Tailored 3D Magnetic Supercrystals.

The fabrication and integration of sub-millimeter magnetic materials into predefined circuits is of major importance for the realization of portable devices designed for telecommunications, automotive, biomedical, and space applications but remains highly challenging. We report here a versatile approach for the fabrication and direct integration of nanostructured magnetic materials of controlled shaped at specific locations onto silicon substrates. The magnetophoresis-assisted capillary assembly of magnetic nanoparticles, either spherical or anisotropic, leads to the fabrication of high-performance Co-based permanent magnets and Fe-based supercrystals. Integrated sub-millimeter magnets as well as millimeter self-standing magnets exhibiting magnetic properties competing with NdFeB-based composites were obtained through this cost- and time-efficient process. The proof-of-concept of electromagnetic actuation of a micro-electromechanical system cantilever by means of these supercrystals highlights their potentiality as efficient integrated magnetic materials within nomadic devices.

A Big Data Demand Estimation Model for Urban Congested Networks

Abstract The origin-destination (OD) demand estimation problem is a classical problem in transport planning and management. Traditionally, this problem has been solved using traffic counts, speeds or travel times extracted from location-based sensor data. With the advent of new sensing technologies located on vehicles (GPS) and nomadic devices (mobile and smartphones), new opportunities have emerged to improve the estimation accuracy and reliability, and more importantly to better capture the dynamics of the daily mobility patterns. In this paper we frame this new data in a comprehensive framework which estimates origin-destination flows in two steps: the first step estimates the total generated demand for each traffic zone, while the second step adjusts the spatial and temporal distribution on the different OD pairs. We show how mobile data can be used to obtain OD matrices that reflect the aggregated movements of individuals in complex and large-scale instances, while speed information from floating car data can be used in the second step. We showcase the added value of big data on a realistic network comprising Luxembourg’s capital city and its surrounding. We simulate traffic by means of a commercial simulation software, PTV-Visum, and leverage real mobile phone data from the largest telco operator in the country and real speed data from a floating car data service provider. Results show how OD estimation improves both in solution reliability and in convergence speed.

Les 0-6 ans et les écrans digitaux nomades. Évaluation de l’exposition et de ses effets à travers la littérature internationale

Exposure of children aged 0-6 to digital nomadic devices (smartphones and tablets) is increasing and worrisome. This international literature review attempts to take stock of this use and its effects on the child's emotional psycho-development, including some aspects of the psychomotor development and cognitive development. It shows that this consumption remains low compared to that of television, except in the most disadvantaged circles, but that it is added and not substituted for the consumption of previous screens. Four aspects are important to consider: 1) the consumption of digital nomadic devices by children 2) their interactive or not interactive use of those devices 3) the existence or not of parental accompaniment 4) and finally the interposition of the digital screen in the parents-children relationship when parents use them in the presence of their young children. The uses that young children make of digital nomadic devices are evaluated quantitatively, but poorly specified qualitatively: particularly there is a lack of data on interactive or non interactive use of the digital tools (which can be used as a mini television, for watching cartoons or videos), the existence of parental accompaniment, and the contents. Consequently the evaluation of the effects of consumption often concerns the overall exposure, all screens combined, without making it possible to distinguish the respective role of interactive or non-interactive uses. Yet interactivity seems to pave the way for more qualitative uses for toddlers who are greatly enhanced by parental accompaniment. Finally the interruptions in the relationship between parents and children related to the use by parents of technological communication devices in the presence of their young children raises questions about emotional well-being, the children's emotional psycho-development as well as their safety. This phenomenon is called “parental technoference” and its effects are becoming increasingly studied.

Methodology for the design of automotive HUD graphical interfaces

The use of mobile devices inside vehicles while driving is generating an imminent safety risk. Due to this situation, one of the most relevant solutions is the Head-Up Display (HUD) system, which displays information about the system, status, and aids of the vehicle and a little data of the in-vehicle entertainment in the driver’s field of view during the driving activity. In fact, it is important to establish some guidelines or parameters to design HUD interfaces, since the automakers do not disclose their guidelines for the overall design of these interfaces. The main approach of this article is to propose a methodology for the design of automotive HUD interfaces, considering information from the ADAS, IVIS and external devices that meet the current needs of drivers. A validation of the methodology was made with product design engineers and computer engineers. It was concluded that predominantly in the designs the classification of information depending on the level of importance is clear. In this case, driving information is the most relevant in the whole design. An important aspect concerning the implementation of HUD devices is that this technology has more relevance in automotive interior design looking for a perfect balance between the primary task, driving, and the secondary task, multitasking activities on nomadic devices.

Mobile for emergencies M4EM: a cooperative software tool for emergency management operations

In serious emergencies, as in the case of floods and extreme weather conditions, where a substantial number of people are involved and over vast areas which may also involve different provinces, currently civil protection planning carries on emergency management operations within rigid schemes. A procedure that would be capable of handling events acquiring data continuously and developing real time solutions in a highly flexible manner has not yet been proposed.This research focuses on how the systematization of information systems and communication processes can improve the management of emergencies caused by extreme weather and climate events. The objectives of improved service, levels of safety and sustainability of the intervention in emergencies would be obtained through a centralized decision support system.The system and tools that are presented in this paper aim to respond to emergency issues dynamically responding to the dynamics of the events by taking advantage of an information system capable of sharing data, notifications, service orders, appeals for help, information on the status of the transport network and any other information.The system would provide decision support by acquiring information from smartphones and other nomadic devices; it would so provide exchange of information in real time on one or more virtual platforms among stakeholders and between them and the citizens. Substantially, the system is based on smartphone applications coupled with a central management emergency Decision Support System specifically built to make best use of the possibilities offered by the latest telematics systems and cooperative web and phone-based tools.

Methodological Aspects of Field Operational Tests of After-Market and Nomadic Driver Support Systems and Impacts on Mobility

Background: This paper reports on the methodology undertaken and some results achieved within a study of drivers using aftermarket and nomadic devices (the TeleFOT project). Objective: To evaluate the methodology for conducting Field Operational Tests for Information and Communication Technology whilst also providing an example of the method applied in the context of mobility within the TeleFOT project. Methods: A ‘Top down, bottom up’ approach to the derivation of research questions and hypotheses is described. Statistical analysis has been undertaken on data collected through Field Operational Tests and Travel Diaries considering the impact of information functions (such as navigation, traffic information and green driving) upon journey length. Results: A summary of the results relating specifically to how the length of a journey can be affected by information functions indicates that Navigation and Traffic information can reduce the length of journeys whilst Green Driving functions tend to increase the journey length. Conclusion: The FOT methodology was successfully applied in the TeleFOT project as was the novel method for generating research questions. When turning the theoretical FOT method developed in FESTA into practice, several good innovations were made which can be recommended for future FOTs; collation of metadata, the use of comparable origin / destination pairs for analysis, centralised processing of raw data into legs in order to simplify the analysis of the huge datasets collected in the project.

Usage of Smartphone Data to Derive an Indicator for Collaborative Mobility between Individuals

The potential of geospatial big data has been drawing attention for a few years. Despite the larger and larger market penetration of portable technologies (nomadic and wearable devices like smartphones and smartwatches), their opportunities for travel behavior analysis are still relatively unexplored. The main objective of our study is to extract the human mobility patterns from GPS traces in order to derive an indicator for enhancing Collaborative Mobility (CM) between individuals. The first step, extracting activity duration and location, is done using state-of-the-art automated recognition tools. Sensors data are used to reconstruct individual’s activity location and duration across time. For constructing the indicator, in a second step, we defined different variables and methods for specific case studies. Smartphone sensor data are being collected from a limited number of individuals and for one week. These data are used to evaluate the proposed indicator. Based on the value of the indicator, we analyzed the potential for identifying CM among groups of users, such as sharing traveling resources (e.g., carpooling, ridesharing, parking sharing) and time (rescheduling and reordering activities).

Analyzing and Modeling Drivers’ Deceleration Behavior from Normal Driving

Most research in vehicle automation has mainly focused on the safety aspect with only limited studies focusing on occupants’ discomfort. To facilitate their rapid uptake and penetration, autonomous vehicles (AVs) should ensure that occupants are both safe and comfortable. Recent research, however, revealed that people felt uncomfortable when AVs braked. This may be caused by the robotlike braking performance. Existing studies on drivers’ braking behavior investigated data from either controlled experiments or driving simulators. There is a dearth of research on braking behavior in normal driving. The objective of the study was to examine drivers’ braking behaviors by exploiting naturalistic driving data from the Pan-European TeleFOT project (Field Operational Tests of Aftermarket and Nomadic Devices in Vehicles). On a fixed route of 16.5 km, 16 drivers were asked to drive an instrumented vehicle. About 11 million observations were analyzed to identify the profile, value, and duration of deceleration events. Since deceleration events are nested within trips and trips within drivers, multilevel mixed-effects linear models were employed to develop relationships between deceleration value and duration and the factors influencing them. Results indicate that the most-used profile of the deceleration behavior follows a hard braking at the beginning when detecting a danger and then becomes smoother. Furthermore, the results suggest that the speed, reason for braking, and deceleration profile mostly affect the deceleration events. Findings from this study should be considered in examining the braking behavior of AVs.

Testing New Solutions for Eco-Driving: Haptic Gas Pedals in Electric Vehicles

Reducing energy consumption has become a matter of increasing concern for electric vehicle owners. EcoDriver is a project funded by the European Commission, searching for new eco-driving solutions for reducing energy consumption in private and public transport. EcoDriver’s main purpose is to teach efficient driving strategies and facilitate drivers’ decision-making processes through several feedback modalities, in order to help increase driving efficiency and therefore reduce energy consumption. In the present study, the Full ecoDriver System combined with a haptic feedback gas pedal was tested in real driving conditions to give answers to some questions about its effectiveness, efficiency, workload and acceptability in an electric vehicle. The sample profile was composed by thirty young but experienced drivers. They had to drive around an open road track which allowed several possible scenarios such as curves, intersection or roundabout, speed limit changes and preceding vehicles. Average speed was registered on each lap, likewise other subjective measurements. The main results suggest that the efficiency benefits achieved while driving depend on the event type and the feedback modality provided. For instance haptic feedback seems to be especially indicated for roundabouts. In addition, the visual feedback provided by the FeDS nomadic device helps to save energy and learn eco-driving strategies. These outcomes indicate how several feedback modalities could facilitate the decision making process, changing driving behaviour, reducing energy consumption and increasing safety. These questions would help advance further research on eco-driving Intelligent Transport Systems and driving behaviour issues.

A study of users' acceptance and satisfaction of emergency call service

SummaryIn recent years, there has been rapid and significant development of road transport technologies in order to reduce the number of killed and injured people on roads. These include safety technologies, emergency call systems (eCall), and advanced traveler information systems. The eCall system is an automatic in‐vehicle emergency call service, which is mainly used for notifying emergency services about dangerous road situations and their exact location. In this paper, an eCall platform prototype is developed to allow quick and efficient rescue of injured people in dangerous road situations. The eCall function is developed and installed in nomadic devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets). Large‐scale field operational tests were conducted in real settings to assess the impacts of the eCall function provided by in‐vehicle nomadic devices. More precisely, experiments were conducted by more than 250 participants with different sociodemographic profiles in order to study the users' acceptance of the use of the developed eCall function for large‐scale usage. The collected data are analyzed, and results are reported. Performed experiments showed the usefulness, acceptance, and satisfactory performance of the eCall service. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Concept of controlling the usage of nomadic devices in highly automated vehicles

Today, the automobile industry and several research institutes develop automated vehicles for several driving applications. With increasing capabilities of automation, the driver can be more and more dispensed from the driving task and might want to use his nomadic devices to get entertained, read the news or do office work while driving. However, in some complex driving situations (such as road works, freeway exit ramps or lane closure because of car accidents), the automation still needs to safely hand over the control to the driver. These situations require a lot of attention by the driver who must not be tempted to ignore the warnings of the assistance system and to continue any task on the nomadic device until a critical situation originates. This study describes a method to link nomadic devices to vehicles to support a safe usage during highly automated driving and a first approach to ensure a safe transition between different automation modes. Therefore the automation system is connected to the nomadic device in the vehicle and has the ability to actively control the content on the screen. The proof of concept is demonstrated in a research vehicle that drives on a simulated motorway.

Users’ Perception And Reported Effects Of Long-term Access To In-Vehicle Traffic Information Services Mediated Through Nomadic Devices

Abstract ICT-mediated traffic information has been argued to contribute to a more sustainable transport system through affecting drivers. Nevertheless, long-term effects of travellers having access to nomadic in-vehicle systems for traveller information are not well known. This study presents the results from a multi-national large-scale field operational test (FOT). The results show that the users in general were positive to the tested systems and that there were several effects on their driving behaviour but in many cases the effects were limited. Moreover the effects varied between system types. Positive effects were related to comfort, as well as individual and system efficiency. One could also notice that perceived effects were not as high as the participants had expected, leading to some disappointment. Most of the times this was due to the tested systems functioning in a less than optimal way.

Ubiquitous connected train based on train-to-ground and intra-wagon communications capable of providing on trip customized digital services for passengers.

During the last years, the application of different wireless technologies has been explored in order to enable Internet connectivity from vehicles. In addition, the widespread adoption of smartphones by citizens represents a great opportunity to integrate such nomadic devices inside vehicles in order to provide new and personalized on trip services for passengers. In this paper, a proposal of communication architecture to provide the ubiquitous connectivity needed to enhance the smart train concept is presented and preliminarily tested. It combines an intra-wagon communication system based on nomadic devices connected through a Bluetooth Piconet Network with a highly innovative train-to-ground communication system. In order to validate this communication solution, several tests and simulations have been performed and their results are described in this paper.

How do drivers interact with navigation systems in real life conditions?: Results of a field-operational-test on navigation systems

As part of the project euroFOT, the impact and usage of navigation systems was studied in a Field-Operational Test (FOT). The usage and handling of two HMI-solutions for navigation systems – one was nomadic and the other integrated – were investigated during daily drives. For N=99 drivers, data was recorded whenever drivers used their vehicles during a three month period. During these three months, drivers used an integrated navigation system for a month and a nomadic device for a month. In the third month, they did not use a navigation system at all (baseline). Drivers preferred system handling in low demanding driving situations, like standstill or at very low speeds. If system handling occurred while the vehicle was moving, then an adaption of speed and following distance was observed. No increase of critical driving situations, like very close distances, could be found during system inputs. Results indicated that drivers were cautious when they interacted with the navigation systems. They adapted their system handling to the demands of driving and there is no indication that driving safety was jeopardized. These results help to gain a better understanding of how experimental results on driver distraction relate to unobserved driver behavior during daily drives.

IPv6 Communication Stack for Deploying Cooperative Vehicular Services

New-age cooperative services for vehicles involve communication nodes in nomadic devices, vehicles, roads and central stations. However, as the number of vehicular services hosted in both the vehicle and infrastructure side increase, it is more and more necessary to use a proper framework to deploy them effectively using a common interconnection network. Following the ISO/ETSI recommendations, which provide a reference ITS communication architecture, the current work provides an implementation, deployment and experimental assessment of a vehicular communications stack for providing infrastructure-to-vehicle services. The architecture presented in this paper considers open issues such as communications security, the support of geo-referenced facilities, the need of a service deployment framework in vehicles and central stations, and the management of host software.

Effects of Multiple-Device Integration Strategies on Driver Comprehension of Crash Warnings

This experiment investigated the extent to which driver comprehension of imminent crash warnings is affected by the degree of integration when there are multiple Connected Vehicle products in the vehicle. Two displays were placed in an experimental vehicle: one representing original equipment and one representing a portable, nomadic device. Participants were randomly assigned to one of five device integration conditions. Participants drove on a test track and were occasionally presented with either a nonurgent message or an urgent crash warning. Participants recognized warnings most quickly when only one display was active in the car; when both displays were active, response times generally improved when messages and warnings were integrated into a single physical location. Warning recognition times were longer when a warning closely followed a non-urgent message on the other display than when a warning followed a non-urgent message on the same display. When messages and warnings from both source displays were integrated into a single display, this effect was not observed, suggesting that the separate display locations are responsible for the increased warning recognition time rather than the different formats of the messages from each source device.

Application Workload Modelling via Run-Time Performance Statistics

Modern mobile nomadic devices for example internet tablets and high end mobile phones support diverse distributed and stand-alone applications that were supported by single devices a decade back. Furthermore the complex heterogeneous platforms supporting these applications contain multi-core processors, hardware accelerators and IP cores and all these components can possibly be integrated into a single integrated circuit (chip). The high complexity of both the platform and the applications makes the design space very complex due to the availability of several alternatives. Therefore the system designer must be able to quickly evaluate the performance of different application architectures and implementations on potential platforms. The most popular technique employed nowadays is termed as system-level-performance evaluation which uses abstract workload and platform capacity models. The platform capacity models and application workload models reside at a higher abstraction-level. The platform and application workload models can be instantiated with reduced modeling effort and also operate at a higher simulation speed. This article presents a novel run-time statistics based application workload model extraction and platform configuration technique. This technique is called platform COnfiguration and woRkload generatIoN via code instrumeNtation and performAnce counters (CORINNA) which offers several advantages over compiler based technique called ABSINTH, and also provides automatic configuration of the platform processor models for example cache-hits and misses obtained during the application execution.

What impact does legislation have on drivers’ in-vehicle use of nomadic devices?

Nomadic devices are portable technologies that drivers are able to use as means of navigation, entertainment or communication. Behavioural studies indicate that using nomadic devices while driving can result in visual, cognitive and manual distraction leading to poorer vehicle control and reduced attention to critical events. Legislative attempts have been made to impose restrictions on the use of some devices while driving, translating to either a total ban (as in the case of hands-held mobile phones) to limiting the level of interaction (e.g. not entering or changing a destination in a navigation system). In this study, over 1500 drivers across Europe were surveyed and using their country of residence as a proxy for the stringency of legislation, their propensity to own, use and engage in risky interactions with nomadic devices was modelled. Whilst the results varied depending on the nomadic device, the relationship between legislation and use was not always straightforward. Mobile phone legislation, which is relatively simple and well promoted, was clearly understood and adhered to; however, more complicated or less advertised legislation such as that pertaining to navigation devices and music players was poorly comprehended and, where present, generally not complied with. The study highlights the need for drivers to be presented with clear legislation, supported by educational and enforcement campaigns.