Movement Of Persons Research Articles

Weather effects on human mobility: a study using multi-channel sequence analysis

Widespread availability of geospatial data on movement and context presents opportunities for applying new methods to investigate the interactions between humans and weather conditions. Understanding the influence of weather on human behaviour is of interest for diverse applications, such as urban planning and traffic engineering. The effect of weather on movement behaviour can be explored through Context-Aware Movement Analysis (CAMA), which integrates movement geometry with its context. More specifically, we use multi-channel sequence analysis (MCSA) to represent a person's movement as a multi-dimensional sequence of states, describing either the type of movement or the state of the environment throughout time. Similar movement patterns can then be identified by comparing and aligning mobility sequences. In this paper we apply CAMA and MCSA to explore weather effects on human movement patterns. Data from a GPS tracking study in a Scottish town of Dunfermline are linked to weather data and converted into multi-channel sequences which are clustered into groups of similar behaviours under specific weather typologies. Our findings show that the CAMA + MCSA method can successfully identify the response of commuters to variations in environmental conditions. We also discuss our findings on how travel modes and time spent at different places are affected by meteorological conditions, mainly wind, but also rainfall, daylight duration, temperature, comfort and relative humidity.

Inertia Based in-Vivo Triboelectric Nanogenerator for Self-Powering Implantable Electronic Devices

Huge amount of mechanical energy generated by continuous human motion usually is abandoned. Among technologies that convert such abandoned mechanical energy into reusable electrical energy, the triboelectric nanogenerators (TENGs) has many advantages. These TENGs can be used in electronics for human body implants, but the amount of mechanical energy (heartbeat, blood flow, muscle movement) generated inside the human body is very small and the amount of energy converted might be negligible. While, since TENGs are a power generation device using mechanical energy, research on application to the human body is still intensively ongoing worldwide. The highest mechanical energy potential of a person's movement is the mechanical energy due to the upward and downward movement that occurs when a person walks, and cannot be ignored if one adult walks more than 5,000 times a day. If devices capable of harvesting mechanical energy by up-and-down movements are developed, they can be operated as wearable, e-skin, and various sensors and device power supplies for implanted electronics and battery charging supporters. We have developed a device that is optimized based on inertial principle of mechanical energy generated when a person is walking. Assuming a displacement of about 6.3 cm when a person walked, the inertial-based TENG produced a voltage of about 220 V and a current of 45 µA in a single-layer device. Since the developed inertial-based TENG is very easy to be stacked, it can be stacked up to multiple layers, and the voltage characteristics of about 380 V and the current characteristics of 85 µA are reached in the three - layer stacked inertial-based TENG. To verify the feasibility of this level of inertial-based TENG as an energy source at a usable level, the output characteristics were verified by implanting live animals (dogs). In addition, the conversion of mechanical energy generated by the movement of the animal into electrical energy was verified in real time through the integrated Bluetooth. Our approach is expected to have a significant impact on a wide range of applications in biomedical biomedicine as a simple, cost-effective and high energy density output.

Complete Globe Avulsion in a 13-Year-Old Young Boy with Maxillofacial Injury: A Case Report and Review of Literature

Disability is defined as a physical or mental condition that limits a person's movements, senses, or activities. Disability can be congenital or acquired. Modern medicine can only help such an individual with a better lifestyle, but can never cure the condition as a whole. As a result, one is forced to live with it through one's lifetime. Blindness/loss of vision is one such condition which is not only taxing physically but also psychologically especially in a young child. The authors present one such case of complete globe avulsion in maxillofacial trauma due to road traffic accident in a 13-year-old young boy. This case report discusses in detail about the etiology, biomechanics associated with orbital fractures, anophthalmic surgeries, and the various implantation options. The authors would also like to stress the importance of decision making regarding preservation of the globe or enucleation in an emergency situation such as this one, where the patient reports with a “popped out” eyeball. An ophthalmologist along with an oral and maxillofacial surgeon plays a significant role in primary management, restoration, and replacement influencing the final treatment outcome.

The Temporal Association Between Executive Function and Life-Space Mobility in Old Age.

Life-space mobility, an indicator of community mobility, describes person's movements in terms of the distance from home, the frequency of movement, and the need of assistance for movement. Executive function (EF) is a higher-order cognitive function that supervises motor control and plays a key role in a person's ability to function independently. Cognitive impairment often co-occurs with restricted life-space mobility; however, the direction of the longitudinal associations between EF and life-space mobility is unclear. The aim of this study was to investigate the temporal associations between EF and life-space mobility among community-dwelling older people. One hundred eight community-dwelling persons aged 76 to 91 years participated in the 2 year follow-up study. EF was measured with the Trail Making Test. The Life-Space Assessment (range 0-120, higher scores indicate more mobility) was used to assess life-space mobility. Cross-lagged model design was used to examine longitudinal relationship between EF and life-space mobility. The model was adjusted for age and gender. Average age of participants at baseline was 82.2 (SD 4.1) years and 59% were women. Better EF at baseline predicted higher life-space mobility at follow-up (path coefficient = 3.81, 95% confidential interval; 0.84, 6.78, p = .012), whereas baseline life-space mobility did not predict EF at follow-up. EF was a determinant of life-space mobility. Supporting EF may enhance maintaining independence and active participation in old age.

ClothCap

Designing and simulating realistic clothing is challenging. Previous methods addressing the capture of clothing from 3D scans have been limited to single garments and simple motions, lack detail, or require specialized texture patterns. Here we address the problem of capturing regular clothing on fully dressed people in motion. People typically wear multiple pieces of clothing at a time. To estimate the shape of such clothing, track it over time, and render it believably, each garment must be segmented from the others and the body. Our ClothCap approach uses a new multi-part 3D model of clothed bodies, automatically segments each piece of clothing, estimates the minimally clothed body shape and pose under the clothing, and tracks the 3D deformations of the clothing over time. We estimate the garments and their motion from 4D scans; that is, high-resolution 3D scans of the subject in motion at 60 fps. ClothCap is able to capture a clothed person in motion, extract their clothing, and retarget the clothing to new body shapes; this provides a step towards virtual try-on.

An Intelligent Body Posture Analysis Model Using Multi-Sensors for Long-Term Physical Rehabilitation.

Sensors can be installed on various body parts to provide information for computer diagnosis to identify the current body state. However, as human posture is subject to gravity, the direction of the force on each limb differs. For example, the directions of gravitational force on legs and trunk differ. In addition, each person's height and structure of limbs differs, hence, the acceleration and rotation resulted from such differences on force and length of the limbs of a person in motion would be different, and be presented by cases of different postures. Thus, how to present body postures through skeleton system equations, and achieve an long-term physical rehabilitation, according to the different limb characteristics of each person, is a challenging research issue. This paper proposes a novel scheme named as "Intelligent Body Posture Analysis Model", which uses multiple acceleration sensors and gyroscopes to detect body motion patterns. The effectiveness of the proposed scheme is proved by conducting a large number of practical experiments and tests.

Functional Clothing for The Differently Abled

Disability may be broadly defined as a physical or mental condition that limits a person's movements, senses, or activities. Functional clothing is essentially designed to fulfil special requirements of the wearer including body disproportions or impairment. It also may affect a person's emotional wellbeing. This is an exciting field of study where opportunities of research, design and development of clothing for differently persons are being explored all over the world. Research and development of functional clothing in India is a relatively new field. This paper traces outstanding global advances in the field of functional clothing for the differently abled. Disabilities are of many types and functional clothing for each type of disability has entirely different requirements. Persons who are wheelchair bound, those who are bed ridden, persons who are spastic, autistic etc. all require different kinds of functional clothing. Clothing should be aesthetically appealing and should follow current fashion trends wherever possible; they should be easy to wear by themselves; they should be easy to care for and also provide the wearers with a sense of physical and mental comfort. Special requirements which arise from disabilities require the application of design and development to address the physical, physiological and mental issues for the differently abled. Global standards in quality, aesthetics and convenience should be followed so that such persons do not feel uncomfortable in any way. The paper introduces readers to new and exciting developments in the field of functional clothing for the disabled.

Design, implementation and analysis of wearable biomedical assistance device for elderly

In this era, there is an increase in the number of elderly people living alone and also in the number of injuries and deaths due to unavailability of help around them. Here, we aim to design a wearable device for the elderly that will sense their most common troubles and alert their family in case of a peril. Few common problems faced by elderly, the ill-effects of which can be greatly reduced if addressed immediately, include fall and arrhythmia. The assistance device developed by us monitors a person's movements using a triaxial accelerometer to detect falls. It also monitors the person's ECG to detect arrhythmia condition. The device is programmed to alert the concerned person automatically if either or both of these conditions occur.

Design, implementation and analysis of wearable biomedical assistance device for elderly

In this era, there is an increase in the number of elderly people living alone and also in the number of injuries and deaths due to unavailability of help around them. Here, we aim to design a wearable device for the elderly that will sense their most common troubles and alert their family in case of a peril. Few common problems faced by elderly, the ill-effects of which can be greatly reduced if addressed immediately, include fall and arrhythmia. The assistance device developed by us monitors a person's movements using a triaxial accelerometer to detect falls. It also monitors the person's ECG to detect arrhythmia condition. The device is programmed to alert the concerned person automatically if either or both of these conditions occur.

Accurate indoor navigation system using human-item spatial relation

Indoor navigation has received much attention by both industry and academia in recent years. To locate users, a number of existing methods use various localization algorithms in combination with an indoor map, which require expensive infrastructures deployed in advance. In this study, we propose the use of existing indoor objects with attached RFID tags and a reader to navigate users to their destinations, without the need for any additional hardware. The key insight upon which our proposal is based is that a person's movement has an impact on the frequency shift values collected from indoor objects when they near a tag. We leverage this local human-item spatial relation to infer the user's position and then navigate the user to the desired destination step by step. We implement a prototype navigation system, called RollCaller, and conduct a comprehensive range of experiments to examine its performance.

Role of Gaze Cues in Interpersonal Motor Coordination: Towards Higher Affiliation in Human-Robot Interaction

BackgroundThe ability to follow one another’s gaze plays an important role in our social cognition; especially when we synchronously perform tasks together. We investigate how gaze cues can improve performance in a simple coordination task (i.e., the mirror game), whereby two players mirror each other’s hand motions. In this game, each player is either a leader or follower. To study the effect of gaze in a systematic manner, the leader’s role is played by a robotic avatar. We contrast two conditions, in which the avatar provides or not explicit gaze cues that indicate the next location of its hand. Specifically, we investigated (a) whether participants are able to exploit these gaze cues to improve their coordination, (b) how gaze cues affect action prediction and temporal coordination, and (c) whether introducing active gaze behavior for avatars makes them more realistic and human-like (from the user point of view).Methodology/Principal Findings43 subjects participated in 8 trials of the mirror game. Each subject performed the game in the two conditions (with and without gaze cues). In this within-subject study, the order of the conditions was randomized across participants, and subjective assessment of the avatar’s realism was assessed by administering a post-hoc questionnaire. When gaze cues were provided, a quantitative assessment of synchrony between participants and the avatar revealed a significant improvement in subject reaction-time (RT). This confirms our hypothesis that gaze cues improve the follower’s ability to predict the avatar’s action. An analysis of the pattern of frequency across the two players’ hand movements reveals that the gaze cues improve the overall temporal coordination across the two players. Finally, analysis of the subjective evaluations from the questionnaires reveals that, in the presence of gaze cues, participants found it not only more human-like/realistic, but also easier to interact with the avatar.Conclusion/SignificanceThis work confirms that people can exploit gaze cues to predict another person’s movements and to better coordinate their motions with their partners, even when the partner is a computer-animated avatar. Moreover, this study contributes further evidence that implementing biological features, here task-relevant gaze cues, enable the humanoid robotic avatar to appear more human-like, and thus increase the user’s sense of affiliation.

The contribution of the body and motion to whole person recognition

While the importance of faces in person recognition has been the subject of many studies, there are relatively few studies examining recognition of the whole person in motion even though this most closely resembles daily experience. Most studies examining the whole body in motion use point light displays, which have many advantages but are impoverished and unnatural compared to real life. To determine which factors are used when recognizing the whole person in motion we conducted two experiments using naturalistic videos. In Experiment 1 we used a matching task in which the first stimulus in each pair could either be a video or multiple still images from a video of the full body. The second stimulus, on which person recognition was performed, could be an image of either the full body or face alone. We found that the body contributed to person recognition beyond the face, but only after exposure to motion. Since person recognition was performed on still images, the contribution of motion to person recognition was mediated by form-from-motion processes. To assess whether dynamic identity signatures may also contribute to person recognition, in Experiment 2 we presented people in motion and examined person recognition from videos compared to still images. Results show that dynamic identity signatures did not contribute to person recognition beyond form-from-motion processes. We conclude that the face, body and form-from-motion processes all appear to play a role in unfamiliar person recognition, suggesting the importance of considering the whole body and motion when examining person perception.

Measurement of human movement under metrological controlled conditions

The study and modelling of human movement requires accurate measurement of forces and of kinematic quantities, with proper control and monitoring of measurement uncertainty. The metrological aspects of such experimentation are often overlooked in the biomechanical literature. In contrast, we present here a complete measurement system that combines a double force platform with vision and inertial sensors, with some degree of instrumental redundancy, which permits a cross-validation of different measuring channels. Therefore, the system permits the characterization of a person's movement, enabling, at the same time, the verification of the acquired experimental data. Details are provided on the system and on the measurement procedure, in order that experimentation can be reproduced, if needed, in other laboratories. Then, as a test case, the experimental study of hopping is considered. Experimental results are discussed, with special focus on kinematic quantities, and system performance is discussed, by properly accounting for uncertainty issues.

Energy-efficient medium access approach for wireless body area network based on body posture

Energy efficiency has become one of the most important issues in wireless body area network (WBAN). In this paper, an energy-efficient medium access control (MAC) protocol for WBAN is proposed based on human body posture under walking scenery. Due to person's movements, WBAN is a dynamic network, which means that traditional static protocols are no more suitable for it. For solving this problem, firstly, the feature of human walking at a constant speed is analyzed and we divide a spell of movements into a sequence of key frames just like a video constituted by numbers of continuous frames. As a result, the dynamic walking process is translated into several static postures, which the static MAC protocol could be used for. Secondly, concerning the performance of network lifetime, we design a posture-aware approach for lifetime maximization (PA-DPLM). With analytical and simulation results provided, we demonstrate that PA-DPLM protocol is energy-efficient and can be used under constant speed walking scenery.

Wearable Inertial Sensors: Applications, Challenges, and Public Test Benches

The recent technological advances in sensor miniaturization and embedded processing have provided new challenges and possibilities to the field of wearable computing. Two research areas are particularly interested by this innovation: healthcare technology applications that are devoted to analyzing the daily activities of a person to evaluate their general health, and personal dead reckoning (PDR) systems that focus on the analysis of the person's movements to keep track of his/her position in dangerous environments and situations. The identification of suitable algorithms and techniques to process wearable sensors data is a research challenge that must be overcome for both areas. The possibility to compare different solutions over public test benches is crucial to this aim. For this reason, we present the human odometry outdoor data set (HOOD), a public data set for the PDR systems and the wearable human activity recognition folder (WHARF), a public repository for human activity recognition (HAR), composed of over 1,000 acceleration recordings referring to 14 daily activities, and a MATLAB library allowing the creation and validation of acceleration models of the activities.

AN OVERVIEW OF ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS WHEN USING RFID WITH CONSUMERS

RFID has recently garnered significant interest in the area of customer relationship management by tagging consumers wirelessly and automatically identifying them at a distance. Through a descriptive meta-analysis, this article provides results that indicate that the use of RFID technology in consumer applications raises relatively important ethical and moral concerns, particularly in terms of privacy. The results of our descriptive meta-analysis reveal little empirical research and therefore highlight the need to deepen our knowledge on the ethical considerations brought forth from using RFID. The most important ethical considerations were in terms of privacy, which includes capturing shopping habits, consumer demographic information, and tracking of a person's movements. Literature emphasized technological solutions to counter RFID ethical issues, leaving industry normative procedures and regulatory frameworks in the background. To cite this document: Harold Boeck and Fabien Durif, An overview of ethical considerations when using RFID with consumers, International Journal of Cyber Society and Education, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 157-164, 2014. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.7903/ijcse.1172

Using smartphones to collect time-activity data for long-term personal-level air pollution exposure assessment.

Because of the spatiotemporal variability of people and air pollutants within cities, it is important to account for a person's movements over time when estimating personal air pollution exposure. This study aimed to examine the feasibility of using smartphones to collect personal-level time-activity data. Using Skyhook Wireless's hybrid geolocation module, we developed "Apolux" (Air, Pollution, Exposure), an Android(TM) smartphone application designed to track participants' location in 5-min intervals for 3 months. From 42 participants, we compared Apolux data with contemporaneous data from two self-reported, 24-h time-activity diaries. About three-fourths of measurements were collected within 5 min of each other (mean=74.14%), and 79% of participants reporting constantly powered-on smartphones (n=38) had a daily average data collection frequency of <10 min. Apolux's degree of temporal resolution varied across manufacturers, mobile networks, and the time of day that data collection occurred. The discrepancy between diary points and corresponding Apolux data was 342.3 m (Euclidian distance) and varied across mobile networks. This study's high compliance and feasibility for data collection demonstrates the potential for integrating smartphone-based time-activity data into long-term and large-scale air pollution exposure studies.

Fuzzy Adjustment Control in Command Evaluation Platform.

For motor handicapped persons, the use of computer interface devices could be a challenging task. Two research venues have been explored to address the usability problem for handicapped users of computer systems. In the first, the focus is on development of new peripheral devices to accommodate the needs of such users. The second venue, which is the focus of this article, addresses the development of efficient rehabilitation algorithms that can adapt existing interface devices to commands from handicapped users. The main goal of this article is to analyze the existing software adaptation platform PLatform to Evaluate ICT for Assistance with a focus on evaluating and enhancing the use of pointing devices for increased adaptation to interface commands. In the first part of this article, a new quantitative analysis approach is presented, which is useful to occupational therapists in choosing among existing information and communication technologies. We define quantification indicators to be used in the analysis of a person's movements. The proposed indicators would be classified in two categories: Task indicators and adaption indicators. In the second part of the article, we present a fuzzy rehabilitation complementary module that adapts the user command without the need to adjust the interface device. The subject is a quadriplegic 12-year-old boy. The test was conducted using five attempts after a brief description and a small demonstration of the experiment. The test was rerun the second day for another five attempts. The subject could not command the joystick in the left direction without a customized device. With a customized device, he was able to control properly the mouse cursor on the screen. The adaptation technique used in this work helped the subject to properly control the computer pointing device. The evaluation technique helped assess the subject and give the proper parameters to the adaptation algorithm.

Static electricity powered copper oxide nanowire microbicidal electroporation for water disinfection.

Safe water scarcity occurs mostly in developing regions that also suffer from energy shortages and infrastructure deficiencies. Low-cost and energy-efficient water disinfection methods have the potential to make great impacts on people in these regions. At the present time, most water disinfection methods being promoted to households in developing countries are aqueous chemical-reaction-based or filtration-based. Incorporating nanomaterials into these existing disinfection methods could improve the performance; however, the high cost of material synthesis and recovery as well as fouling and slow treatment speed is still limiting their application. Here, we demonstrate a novel flow device that enables fast water disinfection using one-dimensional copper oxide nanowire (CuONW) assisted electroporation powered by static electricity. Electroporation relies on a strong electric field to break down microorganism membranes and only consumes a very small amount of energy. Static electricity as the power source can be generated by an individual person's motion in a facile and low-cost manner, which ensures its application anywhere in the world. The CuONWs used were synthesized through a scalable one-step air oxidation of low-cost copper mesh. With a single filtration, we achieved complete disinfection of bacteria and viruses in both raw tap and lake water with a high flow rate of 3000 L/(h·m(2)), equivalent to only 1 s of contact time. Copper leaching from the nanowire mesh was minimal.

MobileRF: A Robust Device-Free Tracking System Based On a Hybrid Neural Network HMM Classifier.

We present a device-free indoor tracking system that uses received signal strength (RSS) from radio frequency (RF) transceivers to estimate the location of a person. While many RSS-based tracking systems use a body-worn device or tag, this approach requires no such tag. The approach is based on the key principle that RF signals between wall-mounted transceivers reflect and absorb differently depending on a person's movement within their home. A hierarchical neural network hidden Markov model (NN-HMM) classifier estimates both movement patterns and stand vs. walk conditions to perform tracking accurately. The algorithm and features used are specifically robust to changes in RSS mean shifts in the environment over time allowing for greater than 90% region level classification accuracy over an extended testing period. In addition to tracking, the system also estimates the number of people in different regions. It is currently being developed to support independent living and long-term monitoring of seniors.