316 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
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
Verb Crisis
No full textVerb Crisis examines architectural solutions to the extraordinary conditions of an increasingly dense and interdependent world.It presents innovative projects and research through original photos, essays, and exclusive interviews with key figures from architecture and urban planning to environmental, economic, and global affairs. Confronted by shifting densities and uncharted urban transformations, Crisis tackles the conflict between the physical limits of architectural design and the demands on the practice for an updated social relevance. Featuring: FOA, Teddy Cruz, Shigeru Ban, Elemental, Boris B.Jensen, Hilary Sample, John May, Jacobo García Germán, Markus Miessen, Interboro Partners, MVRDV, and Takuya Onishi
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
Storm of the word: conversation on The Tempest between Teddy Jefferson and Martino Marazzi
No full textA dialogue-afterword on the occasion of the publication of New York-based playwright and author Teddy Jefferson's Rorschach Tempest / La Tempesta alla prova, Sedizioni editore
From Philosophy of Science to Philosophy of Literature (and Back) via Philosophy of Mind: Philip Kitcher’s Philosophical Pendulum
No full textA recent focus of Philip Kitcher’s research has been, somewhat surprisingly in the light of his earlier
work, the philosophical analyses of literary works and operas. Some may see a discontinuity in Kitcher’s
oeuvre in this respect—it may be difficult to see how his earlier contributions to philosophy of science relate
to this much less mainstream approach to philosophy. The aim of this paper is to show that there is no
such discontinuity: Kitcher’s contributions to the philosophy of science and his more recent endeavors into
the philosophy of literature and of music are grounded in the same big picture attitude towards the human
mind—an attitude that he would undoubtedly call ‘pragmatic’: one that emphasizes the importance of those
mental processes that are not (or not entirely) rational.
El análisis filosófico de obras literarias y óperas se ha convertido en un objeto de estudio reciente para
Philip Kitcher, algo quizá sorprendente a la vista de su trabajo anterior. Hay quien puede percibir una discontinuidad
en la obra de Kitcher a este respecto: puede ser difícil apreciar cómo sus anteriores contribuciones
a la filosofía de la ciencia se relacionan con este otro tipo menos mayoritario de filosofía. El propósito
de este artículo es mostrar que no hay tal discontinuidad: las contribuciones de Kitcher a la filosofía de la
ciencia y sus empresas más recientes en filosofía de la literatura y de la música se basan en la misma visión
general del espíritu humano, una actitud que indudablemente él denominaría pragmática: enfatiza la importancia
de los procesos mentales que no son (o no completamente) racionales.
Heterogeneity of DKA Incidence and Age-Specific Clinical Characteristics in Children Diagnosed With Type 1 Diabetes in the TEDDY Study
No full textObjective: The Environmental Determinants
of Diabetes in the Young (TEDDY) study is uniquely capable of investigating age-specific
differences associated with type 1 diabetes. As age is a primary driver of
heterogeneity in type 1 diabetes, we sought to characterize by age, metabolic
derangements prior to diagnosis and clinical features associated with diabetic
ketoacidosis (DKA).
Research Design and
Methods:
The 379 TEDDY children who developed type 1 diabetes were grouped by age at onset
(0-4, 5-9, and 10-14 years; n=142, 151 and 86, respectively) with comparisons
of autoantibody profiles, HLA, family history of diabetes, presence of DKA,
symptomatology at onset, and adherence to TEDDY protocol. Time-varying analysis
of those with OGTT data was compared to TEDDY children who did not progress to
diabetes.
Results: Increasing fasting
glucose (HR=1.09 (95% CI 1.04-1.14), p=0.0003), stimulated glucose (HR=1.50 (1.42-1.59),
p<0.0001), fasting insulin (HR=0.89 (0.83-0.95), p=0.0009), and glucose-to-insulin
ratio (HR=1.29 (1.16-1.43), p<0.0001) were associated with risk of
progression to type 1 diabetes. Younger children had fewer autoantibodies with more symptoms
at diagnosis. Of 23/379 (6.1%) children with DKA at onset, only 1/23 (4.3%) had
a first-degree relative (FDR) with type 1 diabetes compared to 102/356 (28.7%) FDR children without DKA (p=0.008).
Children in DKA were more likely to be non-adherent to study protocol (p=0.047),
with longer duration between their last TEDDY evaluation and diagnosis (median
10.2 vs 2.0 months without DKA, p<0.001).
Conclusions: DKA at onset in TEDDY
is uncommon, especially for FDRs. For those without familial risk, metabolic monitoring
continues to provide a primary benefit of reduced DKA but requires regular
follow-up. Clinical and laboratory features vary by age at onset adding to the
heterogeneity of type 1 diabetes.</p
- …
