Artificial Life and Robotics 

About: Artificial Life and Robotics is an academic journal published by Springer Science+Business Media. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Robot & Computer science. It has an ISSN identifier of 1433-5298. Over the lifetime, 1831 publications have been published receiving 9789 citations.

Deep recurrent neural network for mobile human activity recognition with high throughput

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a method of human activity recognition with high throughput from raw accelerometer data applying a deep recurrent neural network (DRNN), and investigate various architectures and its combination to find the best parameter values. The “high throughput” refers to short time at a time of recognition. We investigated various parameters and architectures of the DRNN by using the training dataset of 432 trials with 6 activity classes from 7 people. The maximum recognition rate was 95.42% and 83.43% against the test data of 108 segmented trials each of which has single activity class and 18 multiple sequential trials, respectively. Here, the maximum recognition rates by traditional methods were 71.65% and 54.97% for each. In addition, the efficiency of the found parameters was evaluated using additional dataset. Further, as for throughput of the recognition per unit time, the constructed DRNN was requiring only 1.347 ms, while the best traditional method required 11.031 ms which includes 11.027 ms for feature calculation. These advantages are caused by the compact and small architecture of the constructed real time oriented DRNN.

Children, robotics, and education

Abstract: Popular interest in robotics has increased astonishingly in the last few years. Robotics is seen by many as offering major new benefits in education at all levels. Before rushing to exploit this popularity, educators should ask serious questions about the universality and longevity of the robotics phenomenon. Is it a fashion? To be useful, the energy released by robotics must be sustained and universal, and the means of exploiting it must be systematic. Universities define their own robotics curriculum, but most schools lack both the resources and the freedom to do this, and must work with a national curriculum. If it can be shown that robotics has sustained potential in education, it seems inevitable that new ways need to be found to integrate it into the school curriculum.

Playware technology for physically activating play

Abstract: We present and use the robotic building block concept to create playware. Playware is the use of intelligent technology to create the kinds of leisure activity we normally label play, i.e., intelligent hard- and software that aims at producing play and playful experiences among users. The technological concept of physical building blocks with processing, input, and output (including communication) is derived from embodied artificial intelligence that emphasizes the role of interplay between morphology and control. We exemplify the building block concept with the tangible tiles that we created as components for a new kind of playground on which children can experience immediate feedback on their motions. Hence, this kind of playground allows the implementation of games and plays that demand physical activity amongst the users, and thereby contribute as a new tool in the fight against obesity. The tangible tiles are homogenous building blocks, which gives assembly, substitution, and production advantages. However, we may also create a system of heterogeneous building blocks, e.g., by adding special-purpose tiles such as loud-speaker tiles. We performed tests with the tangible tiles placed at a school for 2 months' continuous use.

Feature extraction from EEGs associated with emotions

Abstract: The state of mind of a person is supported by the brain activity, and hence features of the state of mind appear in the scalp potentials, as seen on an electroencephalogram (EEG). The EEG features have been extracted into a set of 135 state variables of cross-correlation coefficients of EEGs collected with ten scalp electrodes in the θ, α, and β frequency bands corresponding toanger, sadness, joy, andrelaxation. An emotion matrix is defined which transforms the set of 135 state variables into a four-element emotion vector of which the components are indexes corresponding to the four elementary emotional states. The maximum time resolution of the emotion analysis is 0.64s and it is done in real time. This new technique has a wide variety of applications in both medical and non-medical areas, and the technology suggests the possibility of direct control of systems by the human emotional state.

Electric wheelchair control with gaze direction and eye blinking

Abstract: We propose an electric wheelchair controlled by gaze direction and eye blinking. A camera is set up in front of a wheelchair user to capture image information. The sequential captured image is interpreted to obtain the gaze direction and eye blinking properties. The gaze direction is expressed by the horizontal angle of the gaze, and this is derived from the triangle formed by the centers of the eyes and the nose. The gaze direction and eye blinking are used to provide direction and timing commands, respectively. The direction command relates to the direction of movement of the electric wheelchair, and the timing command relates to the time when the wheelchair should move. The timing command with an eye blinking mechanism is designed to generate ready, backward movement, and stop commands for the electric wheelchair. Furthermore, to move at a certain velocity, the electric wheelchair also receives a velocity command as well as the direction and timing commands. The disturbance observer-based control system is used to control the direction and velocity. For safety purposes, an emergency stop is generated when the electric wheelchair user does not focus their gaze consistently in any direction for a specifi ed time. A number of simulations and experiments were conducted with the electric wheelchair in a laboratory environment.