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The increasing demand of wearable devices leads to evolving technologies within the smart industries field. Built-in sensors in fabrics represents a state of the art technology and open a new area in the development of smart systems. Smart sensor devices play an important role in the domains of healthcare, motion detection, sports and fitness. This paper presents the design, construction and evaluation of a piezoresistive woven fabric sewn into a wool glove which represents a versatile smart sensor tool for motion detection use cases. This wearable gesture sensing device provides a gesture-based realtime interaction with digital technologies as well as Virtual and Augmented Reality. We show in this paper that piezoresistive fabric proves to be a reliant sensing device due to the evaluation of resistance changes during stretch and strain. The paper includes research of wiring and electrical contacting of fabric patches to gain precise measurement results suppressing interferences caused by external factors like dermal contacts. The prototype, developed in this paper, shows detection of basic movements and gestures.

The recent development of conductive fibers and elastomers has made it possible to realize more embedded sensor fabrics and their use in so-called smart textiles. These textiles can, for example, act as an interface, display information with led strips or monitor general health related parameters with embedded sensors. This generally means more comfort and a better user experience.This paper compares several conductive textiles and evaluates their ability to sense movement when used in socks. Motion information is derived from the distribution and displacement of the body’s center of gravity, while the center of gravity is determined by the distribution of pressure at protruding points of the foot.Small spots of piezoresistive textiles are sewn onto the underside of commercially available socks to measure the pressure distribution. These strips must meet several criteria to ensure accuracy and consistency over several test iterations. Factors such as the charge or discharge curve, humidity disturbance and the surface or shape of the strip were investigated. Finally, a proof of concept in the form of a prototype is presented.

Wearables are a fast evolving field and consists among other things of electronic parts as well as smart textiles such as conductive or light emitting yarns.The common approach of creating a smart textile sensor is using a piece of conductive or piezo resistive fabric and sew or iron it onto an existing garment, or process the fabric during manufacturing. In this work we develop a novel process that uses a commercially available 3D printer with an electrical conductive and flexible plastic, to print the sensor directly onto the textile and eliminate the sewing process or the use of prefabricated clothing.This paper covers not only the tweaking and printing process of the sensor, but also the test definition and execution to evaluate and characterise the sensor. The novelty of this paper is the imparting of the sensors behaviour, and the way how the properties are measured. The further planned application of this sensor is, e.g., the measurement of the breath rate without an extra pulse belt.

In industrial environments the operating time of equipment is a critical factor. Through predicitve maintenance the necessary inspection tasks that require machine downtimes are minimized. For industrial fans that evacuate very hot mediums or air with a high content of abrasive dust or particulates there is currently no possibility to reliably sense the wear and tear of the fan blades during operation. This work investigates the use of a radar sensor for estimating the wear of such fans by sensing vibrations and rotational imbalances. For this task a frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar sensor is evaluated and suitable signal processing algorithms are developed to extract the desired information. Furthermore, the optimal sensing position, modulation waveform and fan optimizations are considered. This paper focuses on the basic signal processing techniques necessary as well as the measurement setup, simulations and first measurement evaluations.

The foot pressure distribution, while standing, walking, or running, is an important parameter for gait analysis and feet health status in the field of sports, rehabilitation, or medical applications. In this paper, we show a system for improving medical rehabilitation for patients after musculoskeletal operations. Postoperative surgery for knee surgery is usually due to excessive movement during the rehabilitation phase. Non-invasive and gentle surgical procedures mean that patients are less likely to experience pain and are using their musculoskeletal system too early. With the presented solution consisting of pressure-sensitive shoe insoles and socks, we show a system for detecting overload conditions. We discuss the construction, the hardware and software architecture of the proposed solution, and show first measurement results.

This book discusses change management paradigms with special reference to examples and cases from the transition societies in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The first chapter analyses developments and trends in the wider societal context of Central and Eastern Europe. Theoretical perspectives are applied to understand the processes of transition and EU accession in Central and Eastern Europe. Following the second and third chapters, the most frequently used tools and procedures of change management are analysed from the perspective of a CEE organization. The special advantage of the text to the potential readership is the integration of 'macro' (societal) and 'micro' (organizational) points of view towards understanding change. The text also provides real-life examples and perspectives of understanding and managing change from Central and Eastern Europe, which helps the reader to grasp the wider political, economic and societal context(s) of the CEE region.

In this paper, authors analyze the entrepreneurial intentions of the student population at the University of Split, Croatia and relate them to students’ general perceptions of entrepreneurship and its social role/desirability. As the longitudinal data have been collected during the recession in the Croatian economy, this study provides initial empirical results, related to general trends of economic and social treatment of entrepreneurship in South East Europe, in the specific context of a prolonged economic downturn. The empirical findings demonstrate that the perceived desirability of entrepreneurship, as related to students’ primary reference groups (family, friends, peers), influences their entrepreneurial intent. The other factors, which proved as empirically significant in determining the students’ entrepreneurial intent, include the perception of self-efficacy, as well as relevant knowledge and skills. The desirability of an entrepreneurial career in the wider society is not empirically relevant for the surveyed students. The obtained empirical results are discussed from the aspect of improving entrepreneurial education, as well as public policies, related to youth unemployment and the development of entrepreneurial culture among the population of young people in South East Europe.

The recent emergence of Near Field Communication (NFC) enabled smart phones resulted in an increasing interest in NFC security. Several new attack scenarios, using NFC devices either as attack platform or as device under attack, have been discovered. One of them is the software-based relay attack. In this paper we evaluate the feasibility of the software-based relay attack in an existing mobile contactless payment system. We give an in-depth analysis of Google Wallet's credit card payment functionality. We describe our prototypical relay system that we used to successfully mount the software-based relay attack on Google Wallet. We discuss the practicability and threat potential of the attack and provide several possible workarounds. Finally, we analyze Google's approach to solving the issue of software-based relay attacks in their recent releases of Google Wallet.

This paper presents a new approach for ticketing systems using NFC smartphones. Current systems use NFC enabled mobile phones either in card emulation or peer-to-peer mode for exchanging data and for validating tickets for instance. In practice these systems face different barriers regarding realization and interoperability from developers and operators perspective, which prevents them to be widely rolled out. In this paper we propose a solution, where the mobile phone is in reader/writer mode and the ticketing system is in card emulation mode. The major advantage for this inverse scenario is that it can be implemented very easily by using light-weight protocols, which are compatible to existing mobile phones. This paper provides an overview about the major problems, discusses advantages and disadvantages of the new approach, and finally describes an implementation from a proof of concept realization.