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Studies analyzing indoor thermal environments comprising temperature and humidity may be insufficient when obtaining data from sensors, which may be susceptible to inaccurate or failed information from internal and external factors. Therefore, this study proposes an intelligent climate monitoring using a supervised learning method for virtual hygrothermal measurement in enclosed buildings used to predict temperature and relative humidity when a sensor failure is detected. The methodology comprises the data collection from a wireless sensor network, the building of the learning model for predicting the dynamics of environmental variables, and the implementation of a sensor failure detection model. We use an artificial hydrocarbon network as the learning model for their simplicity and effectiveness under uncertain and noisy data. The experiments use data acquired in two settings: (1) a laboratory office and (2) a museum storage room. The first scenario has multiple workstations, and the staff turns on or off the air conditioning depending on the feeling of comfort, generating an uncontrolled environment for the variables of interest. The second scenario has controlled temperature and humidity to ensure the conservation conditions of the museum pieces. Both scenarios used 12 sensors that acquired data for one month, providing an average of 58,300 values for each variable. Results of the proposed methodology provide 95% of accuracy in terms of sensor failure detection and identification, and less than 0.22% of tolerance variability in temperature and humidity after sensor accommodation in both scenarios.

In this paper we propose the Recurrent Embedded Topic Model (RETM) which is a modification of the Embedded Topic Modelling (ETM) by reusing the Continuous Bag of Words (CBOW) that the model had implemented and applying it to a recurrent neural network (LSTM), using the order of the words of the text, in the CBOW space as the recurrency of the LSTM, while calculating the topic–document distribution of the model. This approach is novel because the ETM and Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) do not use the order of the words while calculating the topic proportions for each text, making worse predictions in the end. The RETM is a topic-modelling technique that vastly improves (by more than 15 times in train data and between 10% and 90% better based on test dataset values for perplexity) the quality of the topics that were calculated for the datasets used in this paper. This model is explained in detail throughout the paper and presents results on different use cases on how the model performs against ETM and LDA. The RETM can be used with better accuracy for any topic model-related problem.

The breathing rate monitoring is an important measure in medical applications and daily physical activities. The contact sensors have shown their effectiveness for breathing monitoring and have been mostly used as a standard reference, but with some disadvantages for example in burns patients with vulnerable skins. Contactless monitoring systems are then gaining attention for respiratory frequency detection. We propose a new non-contact technique to estimate the breathing rate based on the motion video magnification method by means of the Hermite transform and an Artificial Hydrocarbon Network (AHN). The chest movements are tracked by the system without the use of an ROI in the image video. The machine learning system classifies the frames as inhalation or exhalation using a Bayesian-optimized AHN. The method was compared using an optimized Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). This proposal has been tested on a Data-Set containing ten healthy subjects in four positions. The percentage error and the Bland–Altman analysis is used to compare the performance of the strategies estimating the breathing rate. Besides, the Bland–Altman analysis is used to search for the agreement of the estimation to the reference.The percentage error for the AHN method is 2.19±2.1 with and agreement with respect of the reference of ≈99%.

Human falls are considered as an important health problem worldwide. Fall detection systems can alert when a fall occurs reducing the time in which a person obtains medical attention. In this regard, there are different approaches to design fall detection systems, such as wearable sensors, ambient sensors, vision devices, and more recently multimodal approaches. However, these systems depend on the types of devices selected for data acquisition, the location in which these devices are placed, and how fall detection is done. Previously, we have created a multimodal dataset namely UP-Fall Detection and we developed a fall detection system. But the latter cannot be applied on realistic conditions due to a lack of proper selection of minimal sensors. In this work, we propose a methodological analysis to determine the minimal number of sensors required for developing an accurate fall detection system, using the UP-Fall Detection dataset. Specifically, we analyze five wearable sensors and two camera viewpoints separately. After that, we combine them in a feature level to evaluate and select the most suitable single or combined sources of information. From this analysis we found that a wearable sensor at the waist and a lateral viewpoint from a camera exhibits 98.72% of accuracy (intra-subject). At the end, we present a case study on the usage of the analysis results to deploy a minimal-sensor based fall detection system which finally reports 87.56% of accuracy (inter-subject).

Inspiration in nature has been widely explored, from the macro to micro-scale [...]

Human activitiy recognition deals with the integration of sensing and reasoning aiming to understand better people’s actions. Moreover, it plays an important role in human interaction, human–robot interaction, and brain–computer interaction. When these approaches have to be developed, different efforts from signal processing and artificial intelligence are considered. In that sense, this article aims to present a concise review of signal processing in human activitiy recognition systems and describe two examples and applications both in human activity recognition and robotics: human–robot interaction and socialization, and imitation learning in robotics. In addition, it presents ideas and trends in the context of human activity recognition for human–robot interaction that are important when processing signals within that systems.

Electric direct-current (DC) drives based on DC motor are extremely important in the manufacturing process, so it must be crucial to increase their performance when they are working on load disturbances or the DC motor’s parameters change. Usually, several load torque suddenly appears when electric drives are operating in a speed closed-loop, so robust controllers are required to keep the speed high-performance. One of the most well-known robust strategies is the sliding mode controller (SMC), which works under discontinue operation. This controller can handle disturbances and variations in the plant’s parameters, so the controller has robust performance. Nevertheless, it has some disadvantages (chattering). Therefore, this paper proposed a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) that includes an artificial organic network for adjusting the command signal of the SMC. The proposed controller gives a smooth signal that decrements the chattering in the SMC. The stability condition that is based on Lyapunov of the DC motor is driven is evaluated; besides, the stability margins are calculated. The proposed controller is designed using co-simulation and a real testbed since co-simulation is an extremely useful tool in academia and industry allows to move from co-simulation to real implementation in short period of time. Moreover, there are several universities and industries that adopt co-simulation as the main step to design prototypes. Thus, engineering students and designers are able to achieve excellent results when they design rapid and functional prototypes. For instance, co-simulation based on Multisim leads to design directly printed circuit boards so engineering students or designers could swiftly get an experimental DC drive. The experimental results using this platform show excellent DC-drive performance when the load torque disturbances are suddenly applied to the system. As a result, the proposed controller based on fuzzy artificial organic and SMC allows for adjusting the command signal that improves the dynamic response in DC drives. The experimental response using the sliding-mode controller with fuzzy artificial organic networks is compared against an auto-tuning, Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID), which is a conventional controller. The PID controller is the most implemented controller in several industries, so this proposal can contribute to improving manufacturing applications, such as micro-computer numerical control (CNC) machines. Moreover, the proposed robust controller achieves a superior-speed response under the whole tested scenarios. Finally, the presented design methodology based on co-simulation could be used by universities and industry for validating and implementing advanced control systems in DC drives.

A multiperiod generation and transmission expansion planning (G&TEP) problem is considered. This model integrates conventional generation with renewable energy sources, assuming a stochastic approach. The proposed approach is based on a centralized planned transmission expansion. Due to the worldwide recent energy guidelines, it is necessary to generate expansion plans adequate to the forecast demand over the next years. Nowadays, in most energy systems, a public entity develops both the short and long of electricity-grid expansion planning. Due to the complexity of the problem, there are different strategies to find expansion plans that satisfy the uncertainty conditions addressed. We proposed to address the G&TEP problem with a pure genetic algorithm approach. Different constraint-handling techniques were applied to deal with two complex case studies presented. Numerical results are shown to compare the strategies used in the test systems, and key factors such as a prior initialization of population and the estimated minimum number of generations are discussed.

The monitoring of respiratory rate is a relevant factor in medical applications and day-to-day activities. Contact sensors have been used mostly as a direct solution and they have shown their effectiveness, but with some disadvantages for example in vulnerable skins such as burns patients. For this reason, contactless monitoring systems are gaining increasing attention for respiratory detection. In this paper, we present a new non-contact strategy to estimate respiratory rate based on Eulerian motion video magnification technique using Hermite transform and a system based on a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN). The system tracks chest movements of the subject using two strategies: using a manually selected ROI and without the selection of a ROI in the image frame. The system is based on the classifications of the frames as an inhalation or exhalation using CNN. Our proposal has been tested on 10 healthy subjects in different positions. To compare performance of methods to detect respiratory rate the mean average error and a Bland and Altman analysis is used to investigate the agreement of the methods. The mean average error for the automatic strategy is 3.28 ± 3.33 % with and agreement with respect of the reference of ≈98%.

Distributed generators (DGs) based on renewable energy systems such as wind turbines, solar panels, and storage systems, are key in transforming the current electric grid into a green and sustainable network. These DGs are called inverter-interfaced systems because they are integrated into the grid through power converters. However, inverter-interfaced systems lack inertia, deteriorating the stability of the grid as frequency and voltage oscillations emerge. Additionally, when DGs are connected to the grid, its robustness against unbalanced conditions must to be ensured. This paper presents a robust control scheme for power regulation in DGs, which includes inertia and operates under unbalanced conditions. The proposed scheme integrates a robust control algorithm to ensured power regulation, despite unbalanced voltages. The control algorithm is an artificial hydrocarbon network controller, which is a chemically-inspired technique, based on carbon networks, that provides stability, robustness, and accuracy. The robustness and stability of the proposed control scheme are tested using Lyapunov techniques. Simulation, considering one- and three-phase voltage sags, is executed to validate the performance of the control scheme.

Falls, especially in elderly persons, are an important health problem worldwide. Reliable fall detection systems can mitigate negative consequences of falls. Among the important challenges and issues reported in literature is the difficulty of fair comparison between fall detection systems and machine learning techniques for detection. In this paper, we present UP-Fall Detection Dataset. The dataset comprises raw and feature sets retrieved from 17 healthy young individuals without any impairment that performed 11 activities and falls, with three attempts each. The dataset also summarizes more than 850 GB of information from wearable sensors, ambient sensors and vision devices. Two experimental use cases were shown. The aim of our dataset is to help human activity recognition and machine learning research communities to fairly compare their fall detection solutions. It also provides many experimental possibilities for the signal recognition, vision, and machine learning community.

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) involve large number of sensor nodes distributed at diverse locations. The collected data are prone to be inaccurate and faulty due to internal or external influences, such as, environmental interference or sensor aging. Intelligent failure detection is necessary for the effective functioning of the sensor network. In this paper, we propose a supervised learning method that is named artificial hydrocarbon networks (AHN), to predict temperature in a remote location and detect failures in sensors. It allows predicting the temperature and detecting failure in sensor node of remote locations using information from a web service comparing it with field temperature sensors. For experimentation, we implemented a small WSN to test our sensor in order to measure failure detection, identification and accommodation proposal. In our experiments, 94.18% of the testing data were recovered and accommodated allowing of validation our proposed approach that is based on AHN, which detects, identify and accommodate sensor failures accurately.

Fall detection can improve the security and safety of older people and alert when fall occurs. Fall detection systems are mainly based on wearable sensors, ambient sensors, and vision. Each method has commonly known advantages and limitations. Multimodal and data fusion approaches present a combination of data sources in order to better describe falls. Publicly available multimodal datasets are needed to allow comparison between systems, algorithms and modal combinations. To address this issue, we present a publicly available dataset for fall detection considering Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs), ambient infrared presence/absence sensors, and an electroencephalogram Helmet. It will allow human activity recognition researchers to do experiments considering different combination of sensors.

Physical activity recognition based on sensors is a growing area of interest given the great advances in wearable sensors. Applications in various domains are taking advantage of the ease of obtaining data to monitor personal activities and behavior in order to deliver proactive and personalized services. Although many activity recognition systems have been developed for more than two decades, there are still open issues to be tackled with new techniques. We address in this paper one of the main challenges of human activity recognition: Flexibility. Our goal in this work is to present artificial hydrocarbon networks as a novel flexible approach in a human activity recognition system. In order to evaluate the performance of artificial hydrocarbon networks based classifier, experimentation was designed for user-independent, and also for user-dependent case scenarios. Our results demonstrate that artificial hydrocarbon networks classifier is flexible enough to be used when building a human activity recognition system with either user-dependent or user-independent approaches.

Human activity recognition has gained more interest in several research communities given that understanding user activities and behavior helps to deliver proactive and personalized services. There are many examples of health systems improved by human activity recognition. Nevertheless, the human activity recognition classification process is not an easy task. Different types of noise in wearable sensors data frequently hamper the human activity recognition classification process. In order to develop a successful activity recognition system, it is necessary to use stable and robust machine learning techniques capable of dealing with noisy data. In this paper, we presented the artificial hydrocarbon networks (AHN) technique to the human activity recognition community. Our artificial hydrocarbon networks novel approach is suitable for physical activity recognition, noise tolerance of corrupted data sensors and robust in terms of different issues on data sensors. We proved that the AHN classifier is very competitive for physical activity recognition and is very robust in comparison with other well-known machine learning methods.