Escola Politècnica Superior d'Enginyeria de Vilanova i la Geltrúhttp://hdl.handle.net/2117/959292024-03-28T08:39:42Z2024-03-28T08:39:42ZENGAGE-DEM : a model of engagement of people with dementiaPerugia, Giuliahttp://hdl.handle.net/2117/1688702023-10-12T18:38:55Z2019-09-30T00:00:36ZENGAGE-DEM : a model of engagement of people with dementia
Perugia, Giulia
Dementia is a neurodegenerative disease that affects cognition, producing a reduction in thinking, problem-solving, and mnemonic abilities, functioning, preventing affected people to care for themselves and carry out activities of daily living (e.g., self-feeding, dress oneself), and psychosocial well-being, causing the appearance of disorders of thought content, mood, and behavior (e.g., depression, apathy, anxiety).
The reduction of cognition, the disorientation in space and time, and the inability to complete
basic tasks and function independently are the major causes of institutionalization in dementia. Care facilities are extremely efficient in meeting the physical and environmental needs of persons with dementia (e.g., food, self-care, drugs). However, they often fail in addressing mental and social needs. Several studies show that people with dementia living in institutionalized contexts spend most of their time inactive and isolated. Just as many studies demonstrate that engagement in playful activities is crucial to ensure quality of life and psychosocial well-being in dementia.
On the one hand, the centrality of the medical aspects of dementia is due to the legacy of the biomedical approach to care. On the other hand, it is caused by the objective difficulty of understanding the needs of somebody who struggles to communicate. As a matter of fact, we are in great need of models enabling us to make meaning of how people with dementia express their psychological states.
According to the literature, engagement is the psychological state of proactive involvement with an object (e.g., a game, an interactive system) or an agent (e.g., a person, a social robot) that has a positive affective nuance. In healthy adults, engagement can be measured on three different levels, according to three distinct response systems: experiential/subjective (i.e., self-reports), behavioral/expressive (i.e. overt behavior), and peripheral-physiological (i.e., human bodily reactions). In adults with dementia, the experiential/subjective level is rarely accessible due to cognitive impairment, the behavioral/expressive level might be blunted by motivational disorders like apathy and depression, and the peripheralphysiological level might p rovide insightful r esults, but is often overlooked. As the three response systems are not always equally accessible, it becomes crucial to combine them to achieve the most exhaustive possible measurement of engagement in people with dementia.
The objective of this dissertation is twofold. First, it aims at exploring new techniques to assess engagement in dementia with the help of unobtrusive physiological sensors and systematic behavior observation. Second, it focuses on the development of a model of engagement of people with dementia that could formalize the relationships among these assessment techniques and outline their relative meaning in the economy of the overall engagement state.
In order to pursue these two goals, the doctoral research was organized in three studies.
First, we carried out an extensive ethnographic study to understand people with dementia in their context of living and get acquainted with the activities proposed by nursing homes. Second, we conducted an exploratory study to investigate the reactivity of people with dementia to an experimental setting and deploy a sensible research protocol for data collection. Third, we performed an experimental study and collected a database of multimodal data (e.g., video recordings, electrodermal activity signals, accelerometer signals) while people with dementia were involved in two types of activities: a game-based cognitive stimulation (i.e., jigsaw puzzles, shape puzzles, and a match with dominoes) and a robot-based free play (with the dinosaur robot Pleo).
As a first result, we came up with three techniques to measure different aspects of engagement in people with dementia: electrodermal activity (EDA), the Ethographic and Laban-Inspired Coding System of Engagement (ELICSE), and quantity of movement.
EDA – which is the variation in the skin conductance derived from the activation of the sympathetic nervous system – accounts for the arousal of the person with dementia during
the activity. The ELICSE – which is a coding system of engagement based on nonverbal
behavior – permits the measurement of different body configurations that account for different levels of engagement. Quantity of movement – which is the amount of movement on the non-dominant wrist gauged with a triaxial accelerometer – captures the proactive engagement of the person with dementia during the activity (i.e., holding and manipulating objects, reaching out others).; Según la literatura, la involucración o el compromiso es el estado psicológico de la participación proactiva con un objeto (por ejemplo, un juego, un libro) o un agente (por ejemplo, una persona, un robot social) que tiene un matiz afectivo positivo. En adultos sanos, el compromiso puede medirse en tres niveles: experiencial / subjetivo (es decir, mediante autoinformes), conductual / expresivo (es decir, por el análisis del comportamiento manifiesto) y periférico-fisiológico (es decir, a través de las medidas de reacciones corporales humanas). En adultos con demencia, el nivel experiencial / subjetivo rara vez es accesible debido a un deterioro cognitivo, el nivel conductual / expresivo puede verse afectado por trastornos motivacionales como la apatía y la depresión, y el nivel fisiológico periférico puede proporcionar resultados interesantes, pero a menudo no se contempla. Dado que los tres sistemas de respuesta no son siempre accesibles, resulta crucial combinarlos para lograr la medición más exhaustiva posible del compromiso en personas con demencia. El objetivo de esta disertación es doble. Primero, su objetivo es explorar nuevas técnicas para evaluar la participación en actividades en personas con demencia con sensores fisiológicos discretos y la observación sistemática de su comportamiento. En segundo lugar, se centra en el desarrollo de un modelo de compromiso de las personas con demencia que podría formalizar las relaciones entre los componentes del compromiso y sus medidas. Como primer resultado, desarrollamos tres técnicas para medir diferentes aspectos del compromiso en personas con demencia: actividad electrodérmica (EDA), el Sistema de Compromiso de Codificación Etográfico e Inspirado en Laban (ELICSE) y la cantidad de movimiento. La EDA, la variación en la conductividad de la piel derivada de la activación del sistema nervioso simpático, explica la excitación de la persona con demencia durante la actividad. El ELICSE, un sistema de codificación de compromiso basado en el comportamiento no verbal, permite la medición de diferentes configuraciones corporales que responden a diferentes niveles de compromiso. La cantidad de movimiento en la muñeca no dominante medida con un acelerómetro triaxial, captura el compromiso proactivo de la persona con demencia durante la actividad (por ejemplo, sujetar y manipular objetos). Como segundo resultado, construimos un modelo de compromiso, el ENGAGE-DEM, que especifica los componentes del compromiso, cómo se miden a través de las técnicas de medición implementadas y qué relaciones mantienen. El ENGAGE-DEM es el resultado de un proceso de prueba y refinamiento progresivo de un modelo de compromiso extraído de la literatura. Este proceso llevó a refutar la definición ampliamente aceptada de compromiso como un compuesto de afecto positivo y compromiso proactivo y a la promoción de una definición de compromiso más coherente con los datos. Según ENGAGE-DEM, el compromiso es el grado de participación proactiva de la persona con demencia en una actividad que puede tomar diferentes tonos hedónicos y lograr diferentes niveles de movilización de energía. El ENGAGE-DEM podría contribuir en varios dominios de conocimiento. Podría ser útil en el campo de la investigación en enfermería, ya que podría promover una mejor comprensión de la persona con demencia y permitir una elección más informada de actividades significativas. También podría ser una ayuda para los diseñadores que buscan crear tecnologías atractivas y divertidas para las personas con demencia. Por último, se podría usar para permitir que los robots socialmente interactivos y las tecnologías interactivas detecten el estado de compromiso de la persona con demencia en el mismo momento que se produce la actividad y reaccionar en consecuencia.
Tesis en cotutela, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya i Technische Universiteit Eindhoven
"This PhD Thesis has been developed in the framework of, and according to, the rules of
the Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate on Interactive and Cognitive Environments EMJD ICE"
2019-09-30T00:00:36ZPerugia, GiuliaDementia is a neurodegenerative disease that affects cognition, producing a reduction in thinking, problem-solving, and mnemonic abilities, functioning, preventing affected people to care for themselves and carry out activities of daily living (e.g., self-feeding, dress oneself), and psychosocial well-being, causing the appearance of disorders of thought content, mood, and behavior (e.g., depression, apathy, anxiety).
The reduction of cognition, the disorientation in space and time, and the inability to complete
basic tasks and function independently are the major causes of institutionalization in dementia. Care facilities are extremely efficient in meeting the physical and environmental needs of persons with dementia (e.g., food, self-care, drugs). However, they often fail in addressing mental and social needs. Several studies show that people with dementia living in institutionalized contexts spend most of their time inactive and isolated. Just as many studies demonstrate that engagement in playful activities is crucial to ensure quality of life and psychosocial well-being in dementia.
On the one hand, the centrality of the medical aspects of dementia is due to the legacy of the biomedical approach to care. On the other hand, it is caused by the objective difficulty of understanding the needs of somebody who struggles to communicate. As a matter of fact, we are in great need of models enabling us to make meaning of how people with dementia express their psychological states.
According to the literature, engagement is the psychological state of proactive involvement with an object (e.g., a game, an interactive system) or an agent (e.g., a person, a social robot) that has a positive affective nuance. In healthy adults, engagement can be measured on three different levels, according to three distinct response systems: experiential/subjective (i.e., self-reports), behavioral/expressive (i.e. overt behavior), and peripheral-physiological (i.e., human bodily reactions). In adults with dementia, the experiential/subjective level is rarely accessible due to cognitive impairment, the behavioral/expressive level might be blunted by motivational disorders like apathy and depression, and the peripheralphysiological level might p rovide insightful r esults, but is often overlooked. As the three response systems are not always equally accessible, it becomes crucial to combine them to achieve the most exhaustive possible measurement of engagement in people with dementia.
The objective of this dissertation is twofold. First, it aims at exploring new techniques to assess engagement in dementia with the help of unobtrusive physiological sensors and systematic behavior observation. Second, it focuses on the development of a model of engagement of people with dementia that could formalize the relationships among these assessment techniques and outline their relative meaning in the economy of the overall engagement state.
In order to pursue these two goals, the doctoral research was organized in three studies.
First, we carried out an extensive ethnographic study to understand people with dementia in their context of living and get acquainted with the activities proposed by nursing homes. Second, we conducted an exploratory study to investigate the reactivity of people with dementia to an experimental setting and deploy a sensible research protocol for data collection. Third, we performed an experimental study and collected a database of multimodal data (e.g., video recordings, electrodermal activity signals, accelerometer signals) while people with dementia were involved in two types of activities: a game-based cognitive stimulation (i.e., jigsaw puzzles, shape puzzles, and a match with dominoes) and a robot-based free play (with the dinosaur robot Pleo).
As a first result, we came up with three techniques to measure different aspects of engagement in people with dementia: electrodermal activity (EDA), the Ethographic and Laban-Inspired Coding System of Engagement (ELICSE), and quantity of movement.
EDA – which is the variation in the skin conductance derived from the activation of the sympathetic nervous system – accounts for the arousal of the person with dementia during
the activity. The ELICSE – which is a coding system of engagement based on nonverbal
behavior – permits the measurement of different body configurations that account for different levels of engagement. Quantity of movement – which is the amount of movement on the non-dominant wrist gauged with a triaxial accelerometer – captures the proactive engagement of the person with dementia during the activity (i.e., holding and manipulating objects, reaching out others).
Según la literatura, la involucración o el compromiso es el estado psicológico de la participación proactiva con un objeto (por ejemplo, un juego, un libro) o un agente (por ejemplo, una persona, un robot social) que tiene un matiz afectivo positivo. En adultos sanos, el compromiso puede medirse en tres niveles: experiencial / subjetivo (es decir, mediante autoinformes), conductual / expresivo (es decir, por el análisis del comportamiento manifiesto) y periférico-fisiológico (es decir, a través de las medidas de reacciones corporales humanas). En adultos con demencia, el nivel experiencial / subjetivo rara vez es accesible debido a un deterioro cognitivo, el nivel conductual / expresivo puede verse afectado por trastornos motivacionales como la apatía y la depresión, y el nivel fisiológico periférico puede proporcionar resultados interesantes, pero a menudo no se contempla. Dado que los tres sistemas de respuesta no son siempre accesibles, resulta crucial combinarlos para lograr la medición más exhaustiva posible del compromiso en personas con demencia. El objetivo de esta disertación es doble. Primero, su objetivo es explorar nuevas técnicas para evaluar la participación en actividades en personas con demencia con sensores fisiológicos discretos y la observación sistemática de su comportamiento. En segundo lugar, se centra en el desarrollo de un modelo de compromiso de las personas con demencia que podría formalizar las relaciones entre los componentes del compromiso y sus medidas. Como primer resultado, desarrollamos tres técnicas para medir diferentes aspectos del compromiso en personas con demencia: actividad electrodérmica (EDA), el Sistema de Compromiso de Codificación Etográfico e Inspirado en Laban (ELICSE) y la cantidad de movimiento. La EDA, la variación en la conductividad de la piel derivada de la activación del sistema nervioso simpático, explica la excitación de la persona con demencia durante la actividad. El ELICSE, un sistema de codificación de compromiso basado en el comportamiento no verbal, permite la medición de diferentes configuraciones corporales que responden a diferentes niveles de compromiso. La cantidad de movimiento en la muñeca no dominante medida con un acelerómetro triaxial, captura el compromiso proactivo de la persona con demencia durante la actividad (por ejemplo, sujetar y manipular objetos). Como segundo resultado, construimos un modelo de compromiso, el ENGAGE-DEM, que especifica los componentes del compromiso, cómo se miden a través de las técnicas de medición implementadas y qué relaciones mantienen. El ENGAGE-DEM es el resultado de un proceso de prueba y refinamiento progresivo de un modelo de compromiso extraído de la literatura. Este proceso llevó a refutar la definición ampliamente aceptada de compromiso como un compuesto de afecto positivo y compromiso proactivo y a la promoción de una definición de compromiso más coherente con los datos. Según ENGAGE-DEM, el compromiso es el grado de participación proactiva de la persona con demencia en una actividad que puede tomar diferentes tonos hedónicos y lograr diferentes niveles de movilización de energía. El ENGAGE-DEM podría contribuir en varios dominios de conocimiento. Podría ser útil en el campo de la investigación en enfermería, ya que podría promover una mejor comprensión de la persona con demencia y permitir una elección más informada de actividades significativas. También podría ser una ayuda para los diseñadores que buscan crear tecnologías atractivas y divertidas para las personas con demencia. Por último, se podría usar para permitir que los robots socialmente interactivos y las tecnologías interactivas detecten el estado de compromiso de la persona con demencia en el mismo momento que se produce la actividad y reaccionar en consecuencia.Energy-aware home area networkingKhan, Rafiullahhttp://hdl.handle.net/2117/956112023-10-12T18:42:25Z2015-02-12T11:43:26ZEnergy-aware home area networking
Khan, Rafiullah
A study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) revealed that about 60% of the office PCs are left powered-up 24/7 only to maintain the network connectivity for remote access, Voice-over-IP (VOIP) clients, Instant Messaging (IM) and other administrative management reasons. The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) proposed several low power states for PCs as effective mechanism to reduce energy waste, but unfortunately they are seldomly used due to their incapability to maintain network presence. Thus, Billions of dollars of electricity is wasted every year to keep idle or unused network devices fully powered-up only to maintain the network connectivity.This dissertation addresses the Network Connectivity Proxy (NCP), a concept recently been proposed as an optimal strategy to reduce energy waste due to idle network devices. The NCP is a software entity running on a low power network device (such as home gateway, switch or router) and impersonates presence for high power devices (such as PCs) during their sleeping periods. It wakes-up a sleeping device only when its resources are required. In short, the NCP impersonates link layer, network layer, transport layer and application layer presence on behalf of sleeping devices.
In this dissertation, we presented the design and implementation of our NCP prototype. The NCP concept faces several issues and challenges that we tried to address in the most effective way in our implementations. Knowing when to start or stop proxying presence on behalf of sleeping devices is critically important for the NCP operations. To achieve this objective in a seamless way without requiring any user intervention, we developed a kernel module that monitors the power state transitions of the device and immediately informs the NCP over a suitable communication protocol in case of any update. An important challenge for the NCP is its ability to proxy a huge and ever increasing number of applications and networking protocols on behalf of sleeping devices. To tackle with this challenge in an efficient way, we implemented a quite generalized set of behavioral rules in our NCP framework that can be suitable for any protocol or application. We also incorporated deployment flexibility in our NCP software that enables us to operate it on on-board NIC, switch/router or on a standalone PC.
On-board NIC and switch/router are the optimal locations for the NCP software in home/small office environment (very limited number of devices) or a standalone PC with enough resources is a good choice if high scalability is desirable e.g., medium or large size organizations. A communication protocol is required for information exchange between the NCP and client devices e.g., for power state notifications, registration/de-registration of client devices/behavioral rules etc. To avoid any configuration issues, we developed a flexible and reliable communication framework based on the Universal Plug & Play (UPnP) architecture that provides interesting features such as auto-discovery, zero-configuration and seamless communication between the NCP and client devices.
We expanded the NCP coverage beyond LAN boundaries in order to exploit its full potential in terms of energy savings by covering for thousands of client devices. A single global powerful NCP instance located anywhere in the Internet can make easier the implementation of complex tasks and boosts up the energy savings by also shutting down the unused access links and the packets forwarding equipments whenever possible. Further, we also extended the NCP concept for mobile devices to help in improving the battery life. Another important contribution of this dissertation includes the extensive evaluation of the NCP performance on different low power hardwares. We performed large number of experiments and evaluated the effectiveness of NCP prototype in different
Cotutela Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya i Università degli Studi di Genova
2015-02-12T11:43:26ZKhan, RafiullahA study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) revealed that about 60% of the office PCs are left powered-up 24/7 only to maintain the network connectivity for remote access, Voice-over-IP (VOIP) clients, Instant Messaging (IM) and other administrative management reasons. The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) proposed several low power states for PCs as effective mechanism to reduce energy waste, but unfortunately they are seldomly used due to their incapability to maintain network presence. Thus, Billions of dollars of electricity is wasted every year to keep idle or unused network devices fully powered-up only to maintain the network connectivity.This dissertation addresses the Network Connectivity Proxy (NCP), a concept recently been proposed as an optimal strategy to reduce energy waste due to idle network devices. The NCP is a software entity running on a low power network device (such as home gateway, switch or router) and impersonates presence for high power devices (such as PCs) during their sleeping periods. It wakes-up a sleeping device only when its resources are required. In short, the NCP impersonates link layer, network layer, transport layer and application layer presence on behalf of sleeping devices.
In this dissertation, we presented the design and implementation of our NCP prototype. The NCP concept faces several issues and challenges that we tried to address in the most effective way in our implementations. Knowing when to start or stop proxying presence on behalf of sleeping devices is critically important for the NCP operations. To achieve this objective in a seamless way without requiring any user intervention, we developed a kernel module that monitors the power state transitions of the device and immediately informs the NCP over a suitable communication protocol in case of any update. An important challenge for the NCP is its ability to proxy a huge and ever increasing number of applications and networking protocols on behalf of sleeping devices. To tackle with this challenge in an efficient way, we implemented a quite generalized set of behavioral rules in our NCP framework that can be suitable for any protocol or application. We also incorporated deployment flexibility in our NCP software that enables us to operate it on on-board NIC, switch/router or on a standalone PC.
On-board NIC and switch/router are the optimal locations for the NCP software in home/small office environment (very limited number of devices) or a standalone PC with enough resources is a good choice if high scalability is desirable e.g., medium or large size organizations. A communication protocol is required for information exchange between the NCP and client devices e.g., for power state notifications, registration/de-registration of client devices/behavioral rules etc. To avoid any configuration issues, we developed a flexible and reliable communication framework based on the Universal Plug & Play (UPnP) architecture that provides interesting features such as auto-discovery, zero-configuration and seamless communication between the NCP and client devices.
We expanded the NCP coverage beyond LAN boundaries in order to exploit its full potential in terms of energy savings by covering for thousands of client devices. A single global powerful NCP instance located anywhere in the Internet can make easier the implementation of complex tasks and boosts up the energy savings by also shutting down the unused access links and the packets forwarding equipments whenever possible. Further, we also extended the NCP concept for mobile devices to help in improving the battery life. Another important contribution of this dissertation includes the extensive evaluation of the NCP performance on different low power hardwares. We performed large number of experiments and evaluated the effectiveness of NCP prototype in differentUnifying interaction across distributed controls in a smart environment using anthropology-based computing to make human-computer interaction "Calm"Brown, John N.A.http://hdl.handle.net/2117/956042023-10-12T18:40:18Z2015-01-29T09:53:53ZUnifying interaction across distributed controls in a smart environment using anthropology-based computing to make human-computer interaction "Calm"
Brown, John N.A.
Rather than adapt human behavior to suit a life surrounded by computerized systems, is it possible to adapt the systems to suit humans? Mark Weiser called for this fundamental change to the design and engineering of computer systems nearly twenty years ago. We believe it is possible and offer a series of related theoretical developments and practical experiments designed in an attempt to build a system that can meet his challenge without resorting to black box design principles or Wizard of Oz protocols. This culminated in a trial involving 32 participants, each of whom used two different multimodal interactive techniques, based on our novel interaction paradigm, to intuitively control nine distributed devices in a smart home setting. The theoretical work and practical developments have led to our proposal of seven contributions to the state of the art.
Cotutela Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya i Alpen-Adria-Universität Klagenfurt, Austria
2015-01-29T09:53:53ZBrown, John N.A.Rather than adapt human behavior to suit a life surrounded by computerized systems, is it possible to adapt the systems to suit humans? Mark Weiser called for this fundamental change to the design and engineering of computer systems nearly twenty years ago. We believe it is possible and offer a series of related theoretical developments and practical experiments designed in an attempt to build a system that can meet his challenge without resorting to black box design principles or Wizard of Oz protocols. This culminated in a trial involving 32 participants, each of whom used two different multimodal interactive techniques, based on our novel interaction paradigm, to intuitively control nine distributed devices in a smart home setting. The theoretical work and practical developments have led to our proposal of seven contributions to the state of the art.