Intelligent generation of navigation routes based on individual stress level

Ancona, 30 October 2014. The impact of stress of every human being has become a serious problem. Reported impacts on persons are a higher rate or health disorders like heart problems, obesity, asthma, diabetes, depressions and many others. An individual in a stressful situation has to deal with altered cognition as well as an affected decision making skill and problem solving. This could lead to a higher risk for accidents in dynamic environments such as automotive. Different papers faced the estimation as well as prediction of drivers’ stress level during driving. Another important question is not only the stress level of the driver himself, but also the influence on and of a group of other drivers in the near area.

SmartSleep - Data mining with multiple sensor data for detecting relationships between behavior and health

Constance, October 2014. Sleep disorders are widely distributed and often they are accompanied with chronic health problems like diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular and psychiatric diseases (like depression). For example, sleep apnea, a sleep disorder provoking frequent interrupts on breathing, impacts 4% of the male and 2% of the female population.

The majority of studies about sleep disorders are based on questionnaires capturing information about sleep, living habits, actigraphy, polysomnography or measurements taken in a laboratory. Modern developments like smart watches in mobile health care offer the possibility to capture behavior and sleep patterns during and over the day/night for a longer period and this will support a medical professional in their diagnosis. Telemedicine will support monitoring the treatment of sleep disorders over time.

Master Informatik

(Open for HTWG and University students)

First meeting: Thursday 9.October 2014, at 17:30 in F-128.

The seminar will address different up to date topics currently discussed in research. Based on literature and/or literature and demonstrators, Master students will receive material helping to understand the new domain and typical models or systems available this field. After studying the introductory material, the students should be able to understand and summarize the domain. In a second step, the student is asked to develop a new idea based on the knowledge obtained but contributing to a gap that has to be detected. The idea will be presented and discussed before the student is asked to prepare a detailed description of the idea and a suited model to realize it, i.e. contributing to close the gap. Depending on the complexity, a prototype solution can be part of the task. At the end, the work will be presented in two parts: (i) Scientific paper and poster, and (ii) Oral presentation (and demonstration – if possible).

The objective of this seminar is to improve the ability working in a new domain based on related work, detect missing parts and develop a new idea how to address this gap. The student may use this seminar to prepare further studies (like a Master Thesis) or a fundament for setting up a business.

Proposed topics (open for discussion)

1. Mobile QRS complex analysis and stress detection
2. Detection of sleep disorders
3. Dynamic clustering, elastic pathing and heat mapping
4. Embedding of sensors for wearable devices (Smart Watch)
5. Sensors for fall detection
6. Smart training for sport activities

A low-cost mobile electrocardiographic system for stress recognition

Constance, July 2014. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), stress is recognized as a predominant disease with raising costs for treatment and rehabilitation. Each person perceives the stress in a subjective way; therefore, it is important to support an objective way detecting stress in mobile environments. While some people may have clear indications to recognize stress, others will not notice when they pass the threshold from being ‘busy’ to be ‘under stress’. Besides the traditional analysis of stress via the salivary cortisol level test, a growing availability of sensors enabled an alternative approach for non-invasive measurement of biological data relevant for stress detection. 

Team and mini project fair for interested visitors

Constance, July 2014. During the 6th Informatik Summer Camp (July 22-24, 2014), pupils visited the Ubiquitous Computing Laboratory. The main objective of the event is to offer more information about the STEM field (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) but with special focus on Computer Science. Prof. Dr. Seepold welcomed the participants at the lab and he gave a short introduction into the lab activities.

A self-made piano desgined and programmed during the Girls' Day event 

The Girls' Day 2014 at the Computer Science Department was organized by the Ubiquitous Computing Laboratory. Prof. Dr. Clotilde Rohleder and Prof. Dr. Ralf Seepold welcomed 17 pupils from Konstanz and Singen area. 

Young researchers and students contributed to the workshop

Seville, 29-30th November 2013. The workshop AITA - Ambient Intelligence for Telemedicine and Automotive domains - aims to discuss leading edge contributions to the interdisciplinary research area of ambient intelligence (AmI) applied to the domains of telemedicine and driving assistance. AmI refers to human centered environments attributed with sensors. The development of AmI in the two application domains of the workshop shares several commonalities: the extensive usage of networked devices and sensors, the design of artificial intelligence algorithms for diagnosis, including recommendation systems and qualitative reasoning or the application of mobile and wireless communication to their distributed systems. Together with the presentation of common aspects of Ambient Intelligence, a further goal of the workshop is to stimulate synergies among both application domains and present examples. The telemedicine domain can benefit from methodologies in designing complex devices, real-time conform system design, audiovisual or computer vision system design used in automotive driving assistance. Furthermore, the automotive domain can benefit from the user-centric view, biometric sensor data design, multi-user data bases for aggregation and diagnosis using big data like used in telemedicine.

The workshop is co-organized by the Ubiquitous Computing Lab of the Department of Computer Science at HTWG Konstanz.

Link to the workshop: AITA 2013 

 A stress-awareness approach to safer decision making in the trading process integrating biometric sensor technology

On Jan 21st, 2013, Alejandro Fernández-Montes González defended his Ph.D. dissertation at Universidad de Sevilla, Spain, entitled; “Energy Saving Policies in Grid Computing and Smart Environment". A great part of the research was funded by Spanish Ministry of Education under the project ARTEMISA (TIN2009-14378-C02-01). Alejandro defended his dissertation in a publicly open ceremony held in the Universidad de Sevilla, and was able to comment on every question raised by the assessing committee. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Dr. Juan Antonio Ortega and co-supervised by Prof. Dr. Luis González. An important part of this research was carried out during his stages at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, supervised by Dr. Natividad Martinez and Dr. Ralf Seepold and at Ecole Normale Superiore de Lyon supervised by Dr. Laurent Lefevré.

The thesis has been read and approved by the assessing committee which included Prof. Dr. Miguel Toro, Prof. Dr. Mario Piattini, Prof. Dr. Nieves Rodriguez, Prof. Dr. Ralf Seepold and Prof.Dr. Antonio Ruiz, all present at the ceremony.

The Internationale Bodensee Hochschule inittiated a workshop on the topic demograhic change. Several working groups had been setup. Prof. Dr. Seepold participated in the group "Health&Performane". The main objective was to generate ideas for a future project proposal. A followup meeting is planned.

Ideen für mobile Anwendungen: Baden-Württemberg Goes Mobile