Browsing by Author "Reis, Luis Paulo"
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- Adapted control methods for cerebral palsy users of an intelligent wheelchairPublication . Faria, Brigida Monica; Reis, Luis Paulo; Lau, NunoThe development of an intelligent wheelchair (IW) platform that may be easily adapted to any commercial electric powered wheelchair and aid any person with special mobility needs is the main objective of this project. To be able to achieve this main objective, three distinct control methods were implemented in the IW: manual, shared and automatic. Several algorithms were developed for each of these control methods. This paper presents three of the most significant of those algorithms with emphasis on the shared control method. Experiments were performed by users suffering from cerebral palsy, using a realistic simulator, in order to validate the approach. The experiments revealed the importance of using shared (aided) controls for users with severe disabilities. The patients still felt having complete control over the wheelchair movement when using a shared control at a 50% level and thus this control type was very well accepted. Thus it may be used in intelligent wheelchairs since it is able to correct the direction in case of involuntary movements of the user but still gives him a sense of complete control over the IW movement.
- Boccia game simulator: Serious game adapted for people with disabilitiesPublication . Faria, Brigida Monica; Ribeiro, José Diogo; Moreira, A. Paulo; Reis, Luis PauloIntegration in the world of sport is one way for individuals with disabilities or motor disorders to feel more socially integrated, independent, and confident. Boccia is a Paralympic sport, which is increasingly getting more attention around the world. These facts have contributed to the objectives of this work. Including it in the serious games category enables to develop and rehabilitate the cognitive capabilities. The main focus was BC3 classification athletes (users with limited motor characteristics that require the use of an assistive device—a ramp, in this case). This paper describes a realistic Boccia game simulator adapted for people with disabilities that integrates a set of features that includes real physics and social features. These features can be used to enhance the interest of nonpractitioners of the sport and to improve the training conditions. The official Boccia regulation was added to the design of the simulator. The usability and approximation to the reality of the simulator were tested and validated based on the tests performed and data collected via a survey of users with no motor or psychological disorders. Realism and usability rating was almost excellent, and good results were achieved at the assessment of the game experience.
- A clinical support system based on quality of life estimationPublication . Faria, Brigida Monica; Gonçalves, Joaquim; Reis, Luis Paulo; Rocha, ÁlvaroQuality of life is a concept influenced by social, economic, psychological, spiritual or medical state factors. More specifically, the perceived quality of an individual's daily life is an assessment of their well-being or lack of it. In this context, information technologies may help on the management of services for healthcare of chronic patients such as estimating the patient quality of life and helping the medical staff to take appropriate measures to increase each patient quality of life. This paper describes a Quality of Life estimation system developed using information technologies and the application of data mining algorithms to access the information of clinical data of patients with cancer from Otorhinolaryngology and Head and Neck services of an oncology institution. The system was evaluated with a sample composed of 3013 patients. The results achieved show that there are variables that may be significant predictors for the Quality of Life of the patient: years of smoking (p value 0.049) and size of the tumor (p value < 0.001). In order to assign the variables to the classification of the quality of life the best accuracy was obtained by applying the John Platt's sequential minimal optimization algorithm for training a support vector classifier. In conclusion data mining techniques allow having access to patients additional information helping the physicians to be able to know the quality of life and produce a well-informed clinical decision.
- Compliance study of hazard analysis and critical control point systemPublication . Pinto, Tatiana Sousa; Faria, Brígida Mónica; Reis, Luis Paulo; Cardoso, Henrique Lopes; Santos, TiagoHazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system is based on a preventive methodology to avoid potential hazards that can cause harm and to ensure that unsafe food is not made available to consumers. This system is recognized by the Economic and Food Safety Authority, a criminal police responsible for food safety and economic inspection in Portugal. Every day, Economic and Food Safety Authority generates a large and complex volume of data from inspections and complaints, also in its classification, registration and in monitoring until the end of the process analysis. This study focuses on the reported entities that are related to non-compliance with HACCP, and tries to understand the most common infractions. Results show values between 30% and 37% related to non-compliance to HACCP. As main conclusions, from 2014 to 2018, the number of these infractions maintained the same level and it will be important to understand if the relationship between these problems are related to legislation understanding or application.
- Data mining in adversarial search — players movement prediction in connect 4 gamesPublication . Ribeiro, Ana Carolina; Rios, Luis Miguel; Gomes, Ricardo Meneses; Faria, Brigida Monica; Reis, Luis PauloKnowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) is a major innovation in knowledge extraction. This knowledge can be extracted to recognize patterns or behaviors. Board games playing patterns are a concise experiment on testing data mining methods in order to find such patterns and behaviors. In this work a Connect-4 game is simulated with several distinct players with different characteristics. Most of these distinct players have intelligent game playing abilities, whereas others are simpler and play by very simple rules. The work uses three different data-mining algorithms in order to classify the players and their moves. Analyzing the results achieved we can conclude that General Linear Model leads to better results in terms of accuracy, class precision and class recall.
- Data Mining in HIV-AIDS Surveillance SystemPublication . Oliveira, Alexandra; Faria, Brigida Monica; Gaio, Rita; Reis, Luis PauloThe Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is an infectious agent that attacks the immune system cells. Without a strong immune system, the body becomes very susceptible to serious life threatening opportunistic diseases. In spite of the great progresses on medication and prevention over the last years, HIV infection continues to be a major global public health issue, having claimed more than 36 million lives over the last 35 years since the recognition of the disease. Monitoring, through registries, of HIV-AIDS cases is vital to assess general health care needs and to support long-term health-policy control planning. Surveillance systems are therefore established in almost all developed countries. Typically, this is a complex system depending on several stakeholders, such as health care providers, the general population and laboratories, which challenges an efficient and effective reporting of diagnosed cases. One issue that often arises is the administrative delay in reports of diagnosed cases. This paper aims to identify the main factors influencing reporting delays of HIV-AIDS cases within the portuguese surveillance system. The used methodologies included multilayer artificial neural networks (MLP), naive bayesian classifiers (NB), support vector machines (SVM) and the k-nearest neighbor algorithm (KNN). The highest classification accuracy, precision and recall were obtained for MLP and the results suggested homogeneous administrative and clinical practices within the reporting process. Guidelines for reductions of the delays should therefore be developed nationwise and transversally to all stakeholders.
- Data visualization for analyzing simulated robotic soccer gamesPublication . Faria, Brigida Monica; Santos, Beatriz Sousa; Lau, Nuno; Reis, Luis PauloRoboCup is an international cooperative research project aimed at promoting research in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. It includes a simulation league where two teams of 11 players compete in a robotic soccer game very similar to real soccer. Teams exhibit very complex strategies in these games that are very difficult to analyze by conventional observation methods. This paper presents an approach to the visualization of simulated robotic soccer games using the RapidMiner software package. Various visualizations were developed using Andrew´s Curves, Survey Plots, several types of Parallel Coordinate visualizations and Radial Coordinate Visualizations. These visualizations enabled to take some interesting conclusions about the differences between games of FC Portugal robotic soccer team using different formations and against distinct opponents.
- Empiric evaluation of a real-time robot dancing framework based on multi-modal eventsPublication . Oliveira, João Lobato; Reis, Luis Paulo; Faria, Brigida MonicaMusical robots have already inspired the creation of worldwide robotic dancing contests, as RoboCup-Junior's Dance, where school teams, formed by children aged eight to eighteen, put their robots in action, performing dance to music in a display that emphasizes creativity of costumes and movement. This paper describes and assesses a framework for robot dancing edutainment applications. The proposed robotics architecture enables the definition of choreographic compositions, which result on a conjunction of reactive dancing motions in real-time response to multi-modal inputs. These inputs are shaped by three rhythmic events (representing soft, medium, and strong musical note-onsets), different dance floor colors, and the awareness of the surrounding obstacles. This layout was applied to a LegoNXT humanoid robot, built with two Lego-NXT kits, and running on a hand-made dance stage.We report on an empirical evaluation over the overall robot dancing performance made to a group of students after a set of live demonstrations. This evaluation validated the framework's potential application in edutainment robotics and its ability to sustain the interest of the general audience by offering a reasonable compromise between musical-synchrony, animacy and dance performance’s variability.
- Intelligent wheelchair simulator for users' training: Cerebral palsy children's case studyPublication . Faria, Brigida Monica; Reis, Luis Paulo; Teixeira, Sofia Carmo; Faias, Joaquim; Lau, NunoThe use of real context simulation programs for training driving skills to control an intelligent wheelchair is an emergent area. The aim of this study is to verify if the exigency of use of the simulator of the IntellWheels project is adequate to the skills of children with cerebral palsy. A group study case was performed using children with cerebral palsy classified in the levels IV and V of the Gross Motor Function Classification System, aged between 6 and 12 years old. The user's performance in a wheelchair driving game using the Joystick and the Wiimote (for head movements' recognition) and the users' opinions about the system were studied. Results suggest that the system matches the children skills and it was verified that it was easier to drive the wheelchair with the joystick for most of the participants. Generally, the participants presented positive reactions, showing themselves satisfied with the experiment and convicted about the wheelchair future usability.
- Realistic Boccia game simulator adapted for people with disabilities or motor disorders: architecture and preliminary usability studyPublication . Ribeiro, José Diogo; Brígida Mónica Faria; Paulo Moreira, A.; Reis, Luis PauloOver the last decades, Serious Games have gained increased importance, mainly due to the evolution and expansion of video games and its application in multiple areas. Integration in the world of sport is one of the solutions that individuals with disabilities or motor disorders develop to feel more socially integrated, more independent and confident with themselves. Boccia is a Paralympic sport that is increasingly getting more attention around the world. This has contributed for the objectives of this project since it attracts these patients a lot more easily and including it in the Serious Games category enables them to develop and rehabilitate their cognitive capabilities. It will allow the users being dynamic, holding their attention and motivating them instead of the traditional cognitive rehabilitation processes that quickly become repetitive and discouraging. This paper describes a realistic Boccia game simulator adapted for people with disabilities or motor disorders still on development that aims to integrate a set of features that include real physics, multimodal user interface and social features (diversion, rehabilitation, competition and improvement). These features can be used to enhance the interest of non-practitioners of the sport and to improve the training conditions of Boccia athletes. Results observed in an experiment with real Boccia game components indicate that the simulator offers great similarity to the reality with the maximum difference between the measures obtained in both being 10 cm.