571 research outputs found
Smart Teddy: Elderly monitoring and support system using ambient intelligence: Human Interaction and Integration
No full textIn September 2018, the Smart Teddy project was founded by a group of researchers within the Hague University of Applied Sciences1 in the Netherlands. The Smart Teddy project is a multidisciplinary project aiming to create an interactive system, using a teddy bear as a focus point, which collects the data needed in order to enable seniors with dementia to live independently for a longer period of time. Over the last three years, three prototypes of the Smart Teddy have been developed. The Smart Teddy project was introduced as a final project for students following the BSc program Electrical Engineering at the Delft University of Technology. Starting in April 2021, a team of six students attempted to further develop the Smart Teddy over the course of 11 weeks. This thesis contains the Human Interaction & Integration subdomain of the Smart Teddy thesis project, where Human Interaction refers to the aspects of the Teddy that encourage interaction with the user, and Integration refers to the combination of all subdomains into one fully functioning prototype. In this thesis, the design choices, implementation methods and verification are discussed. The contribution to the prototype regarding Human Interaction & Integration are the addition of a movement system using pneumatics, the implementation of a flexible touch sensor, the ability for the Teddy to produce audio, to communicate wirelessly with the Base Station, and for all components in the Teddy to communicate with the main controller. The final prototype has been implemented using the Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller, which was mounted on a custom PCB. All controls are provided by the Pico, and uses I2C, SPI, UART, and analog and digital inputs to communicate with the sensors and actuators. These sensors and actuators were implemented using off-the-shelf breakout boards and drivers, to allow for fast design and test iterations. The movement of the Teddy has been implemented using air pumps and molded silicon rubber, and the tail wagging is implemented using the same principle used for soft robotic grippers. The final prototype is fully functional and meets 16 of the 20 requirements - the requirement concerning speech recognition and the noise produced by the pumps have not been met.Bachelor Graduation ProjectElectrical Engineerin
Hermite Polynomials as Provably Good Functions to Watermark White Gaussian Hosts
No full textInternational audienceIn the watermark detection scenario, also known as zero-bit watermarking, a watermark, carrying no hidden message, is inserted in content. The watermark detector checks for the presence of this particular weak signal in content. The article looks at this problem from a classical detection theory point of view, but with side information enabled at the embedding side: the watermark signal is a function of the host content. Our study is twofold. The first issue is to design the best embedding function for a given detection function (a Neyman-Pearson detector structure is assumed). The second issue is to find the best detection function for a given embedding function. This yields two conditions, which are mixed into one 'fundamental' partial differential equation. Solutions of this fundamental equation are heavily dependent on the probability distribution function of the host signals. This conference paper is an extract of~\cite{Furon2006:A-constructive}, where we only look at white gaussian hosts. This gives birth to polynomials solutions known as Hermite polynomial, whose extension is the JANIS watermarking scheme, invented heuristically some years ago
A survey of watermarking security
No full textDigital watermarking studies have always been driven by the improvement of robustness. Most of articles of this field deal with this criterion, presenting more and more impressive experimental assessments. Some key events in this quest are the use of spread spectrum, the invention of resynchronization schemes, the discovery of side information channel, and the formulation of the opponent actions as a game. On the contrary, security received little attention in the watermarking community. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of this recent topic. We list the typical applications which requires a secure watermarking technique. For each context, a threat analysis is purposed. This presentation allows us to illustrate all the certainties the community has on the sub ject, browsing all key papers. The end of the paper is devoted to what remains not clear, intuitions and future studies
Watermarking error exponents in the presence of noise: The case of the dual hypercone detector
No full textInternational audienceThe study of the error exponents of zero-bit watermarking is addressed in the article by Comesana, Merhav, and Barni, under the assumption that the detector relies solely on second order joint empirical statistics of the received signal and the watermark. This restriction leads to the well-known dual hypercone detector, whose score function is the absolute value of the normalized correlation. They derive the false negative error exponent and the optimum embedding rule. However, they only focus on high SNR regime, i.e. the noiseless scenario. This paper extends this theoretical study to the noisy scenario. It introduces a new definition of watermarking robustness based on the false negative error exponent, derives this quantity for the dual hypercone detector, and shows that its performances is almost equal to Costa's lower bound
Smart Teddy: Design of the Power Operations and Distribution: Elderly Monitoring and Support System Using Ambient Intelligence
No full textWith the increasing demand in home-care service to provide early intervention at the homes of seniors suffering from early stage dementia, the Smart Teddy prototype offers a technological solution to disburden caregivers, to promote and track the health and conditions of the senior and to prolong their independent life at home. The Smart Teddy is a project founded in 2018 by a research team of the Hague University of Applied Sciences. It is an interactive, companion robot - disguised as a toy dog - that serves as a therapeutic promoter while simultaneously monitoring the quality of life of the senior with pre-determined indicators. It consists of a Teddy to provide the interaction with the user and a Base Station for data processing and charging of the mount-in battery of the Teddy. The Power Operations and Distribution group carried out research on and developed suitable solutions to supply power to the Teddy with rechargeable batteries, to integrate controlled wireless charging of the battery for user-friendliness and to provide a streamlined power distribution throughout the Smart Teddy’s system. Based on an iterated program of requirements and a power budget analysis on the set of installed electronics, a design is implemented for the power system of the Smart Teddy. A design sequence is followed consisting of four stages: (1) battery selection, (2) charger selection, (3) power conversion and distribution, and (4) safety and failure protection. A power system is developed for the Smart Teddy that is able to supply power with lithium-ion batteries with a battery life of at least 12 hours providing a battery capacity of 25.16 Wh. Thereafter, the installed batteries located in the Teddy can be charged wirelessly by placing the Teddy on the Base Station (a dog bed) to reinforce the less robot-like and a more natural look of the Teddy. Furthermore, this system ensures that all electronic modules with different operating voltages and current draws are provided with the necessary power specifications through power-sharing paths and the usage of power converters. Lastly, safety measures and failure protection methods are developed to ensure the safety of the user through the usage of fuses, switches and, cable and PCB management. The design has been verified using the appropriate verification methods where the program of requirements is used as a guideline and assessment tool. The Power Operations and Distribution is largely complying with the program of requirements and is performing according to the predetermined functionalities. Consequently, the power system of the Smart Teddy is integrated in a real, spatial prototype, namely in a toy dog (the Teddy) and its dog bed (the Base Station).Smart Tedd
Teddy Bear: The Dearest, Nearest, and Scariest
No full textThe teddy bear, as one of the world’s most favorite stuffed toy, is distinct from real animals. In this paper, the author applies anthropological, philosophical and psychological theories to mainly explore two questions: 1. Why has the teddy bear achieved such incomparable commercial and cultural success around the world? 2. Is it accidental or inevitable that a cruel monster, instead of other adorable animals, has become the prototype of a popular toy? The paper discussed the dialectic relations between human beings and the nature and argued that perpetuation, tameness and nearness are three main characteristics that offer grounds for the teddy bear’s existence and popularity
Towards a Ride-hailing Services Dependency in Nairobi? Uses, users and regulation
No full textNairobi Traffic Jam. Author: Rogiro. Source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/riot/48712135. License: CC BY-NC 2.0. Teddy Delaunay. “Towards a Ride-hailing Services Dependency in Nairobi? Uses, users and regulation.” Mambo! Vol. XVIII (4), 2021. Summary On-demand Ride-Hailing services (RHs) now play an increasing role within many cities around the world. RHs might increase traffic congestion, vehicle ownership and access inequalities. RHs pose significant challenges for policymakers, and a..
Teddy Bears at the Exit Wound
No full textTeddy Bear\u27s at the Exit Wound frames the “exit wound”, the poisonous suffering that accompanies the witnessing of the mass shooting epidemic, through four creative narratives that depict separate aspects of that suffering. This creative writing piece is written by an author who was a child on the outskirts of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting
The Smart Teddy Project: Design of a data acquisition system to monitor seniors with dementia and detect dangerous situations
No full textThe amount of people dealing with dementia is rising globally. The amount of caretakers is, however, not. Therefore, technological aids are needed to support people dealing with dementia and relieve the stress on their caretakers. Current solutions provide tracking of people with dementia. Also, different robots exist that provide people with companionship. However, no solution exists that combines tracking and companionship capabilities. Therefore, the Smart Teddy is introduced. The Smart Teddy can track different indicators that indicate the progress of dementia and simultaneously provide the user with companionship through interaction. The goal of this thesis is to design a data acquisition system that acquires meaningful data that can be used for the development of algorithms that will autonomously determine the progress of dementia. To achieve this, a system with a Teddy and a Base station has been designed. The Teddy has a sound-, a carbon monoxide-, a smoke- and a movement sensor. Also, a real-time module is implemented to be able to assign the current time to the measurement data. Lastly, a GPS and GSM module is implemented to be able to track seniors in case they wander. In the Base station, a mmWave sensor is implemented that tracks the position, velocity, and direction of the persons present in the room. Also, a processor is implemented that gathers and stores the data from the mmWave sensor and the data from the Teddy which is sent via a LoRa connection. In addition, the designed system can store the collected data for more than one week. The collected data can be used by an expert in dementia to extract meaningful information about dementia progress, after that, an expert in digital signal processing is needed to develop algorithms that estimate the quality of life of a senior suffering from dementia.The Smart TeddyElectrical Engineerin
Watermarking for alternative requirements
No full textWatermarking is a primitive robustly hiding binary messages in host media. However, some applications needs adaptations of this basic primitive. The aim of this chapter is to detail such possible enrichments. However, this chapter is not only a list of less classical watermarking applications. The relationship between cryptography and watermarking is the base supporting this chapter. Cryptography and watermarking tackles the same issue: computer security (but note that watermarking doesn't only target secure applications). The presented enrichments are largely inspired by known functionalities of cryptography. The differences are sometimes quite subtle but important. It would not make sense that watermarking only mimics functionalities of cryptography whose theoretical and practical security levels are assessed for decades. Therefore, this chapter focuses on the interactions between these two technologies. All cryptographic references in this chapter are taken from Menezes et al. (1996). This chapter makes an overview of four different applications: authentication, fingerprinting, watermarking protocols (embedding and detection), and asymmetric watermarking
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