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UWB has been in existence for several years, but it was only a few years ago that it transitioned from a specialized niche to more mainstream applications. Recent market data indicate a rapid increase in the popularity of UWB in consumer products, such as smartphones and smart home devices, as well as automotive and industrial real-time location systems. The challenge of achieving accurate positioning in indoor environments arises from various factors such as distance, location, beacon density, dynamic surroundings, and the density and type of obstacles. This research used MFi-certified UWB beacon chipsets and integrated them with a mobile application dedicated to iOS by implementing the near interaction accessory protocol. The analysis covers both static and dynamic cases. Thanks to the acquisition of measurements, two main candidates for indoor localization infrastructure were analyzed and compared in terms of accuracy, namely UWB and LIDAR, with the latter used as a reference system. The problem of achieving accurate positioning in various applications and environments was analyzed, and future solutions were proposed. The results show that the achieved accuracy is sufficient for tracking individuals and may serve as guidelines for achievable accuracy or may provide a basis for further research into a complex sensor fusion-based navigation system. This research provides several findings. Firstly, in dynamic conditions, LIDAR measurements showed higher accuracy than UWB beacons. Secondly, integrating data from multiple sensors could enhance localization accuracy in non-line-of-sight scenarios. Lastly, advancements in UWB technology may expand the availability of competitive hardware, facilitating a thorough evaluation of its accuracy and effectiveness in practical systems. These insights may be particularly useful in designing navigation systems for blind individuals in buildings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching mathematics to blind people is a challenge of modern educational methods. This article presents a method of preparing the adapted material and its usage in the learning process of mathematics by blind people, as well as the results of evaluating the proposed approach. The presented results were obtained based on a mathematical analysis course conducted in two classes—with and without using the developed method. The developed method uses the conceptualization of knowledge as a graph. The learning process is supported by feedback processes that consider the mechanisms of knowledge and error vectors, on which a personalized adaptation of the learning path is made for each particular student. The evaluation process has shown a statistically significant improvement in learning results achieved by blind students. The average final test score in the group working with the platform during learning increased by 14%. In addition, there was an increase in cooperation between blind students who had the opportunity to take on the role of a teacher, which was observed in 27% of the participants. Our results indicate the effectiveness of the developed approach and motivate us to evaluate the method in a broader group of students. The engagement of students indirectly indicates overcoming the barriers known from the state of the art: uncertainty, poor motivation, and difficulties in consolidating the acquired skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data exchange in the multimedia system between the camera and the computer can be realized via the USB communication interface. Applying the USB port requires tuning the port parameters in such systems to ensure the quality of the services (multimedia) provided. The tuning of the communication system depends on such selection of port parameters to optimize the imposed criteria. The authors proposed a quality criterion based on the USB isochronous interval. The paper briefly presents the quality measure and the transmission model of the data package. Next, the problem of tuning the USB port was presented based on the selected parameters (MaxPacketSize and MaxBurst) of the endpoint of the peripheral device. To assess the impact of the selected parameter on the quality of services in the system, a statistical test for homoscedasticity of empirical distributions of isochronous intervals, was used. Besides the results of the conducted experiments for the selected parameters presented in the paper, the authors also tried to explain the obtained results in relation to the specification of the USB port.

This paper explores the effective approach to road sign detection and recognition based on mobile devices. Detecting and recognising road signs is a challenging matter because of different shapes, complex background and irregular sign illumination. The main goal of the system is to assist drivers by warning them about the existence of road signs to increase safety during driving. In this paper, the system for detection and recognition of road signs was implemented and tested with the use of Open Source Computer Vision Library (OpenCV). The system consists of two parts. The first part is the detection stage, which is used to detect the signs from the whole image frame and includes the modules: data-image acquisition, image pre-processing and sign detection. During this stage, the impact of Canny edge detector and Hough transform parameters on the quality-level of sign detection was tested. The second part is the recognition stage, whose role is to match the detected object with a priori models of signs in the dataset. In the research, the authors also compared the influence of various image processing algorithms parameters to the time of road sign recognition. The discussion part answers also the question whether the mobile system (smartphone) is robust enough to detect and recognise road sings in real time.

Effective teaching and learning mathematics is important to achieve good results during an academic and professional career. This is especially difficult for visually impaired students because of difficulties in managing structural information included in maths formulae. The extended multimedia alternative method, including the problem of decomposition and knowledge vector, were presented and compared to the classical teaching method. A qualitative method to evaluate motivation during the process of teaching and learning maths for impaired students, which includes eleven detailed motivators, has been developed. The alternative teaching method offers statistically significant improvements in four of the eleven proposed assessment categories: success in progress – adjusting the difficulties of learning, presentation of the material, approval: group/individual and alternative presentation of mathematic materials. The experiments carried out allowed the authors to increase the knowledge about the limitations and challenges occurring in the process of maths education among visually impaired students and their motivation. Based on the experiments and research results, it can be concluded that applying the proposed method of decomposition together with evaluation procedure based on the vector of knowledge in the process of teaching and learning of mathematics by visually impaired may increase their motivation positively. The key aspects of the alternative method of presenting math formulae are included in the bellow points: • It increases the availability of materials containing structured information (mathematical formulae) for the blind. • It limits the importance of communication barriers in math education: the possibility of self-study, reducing costs – by reducing the number of individual tutorials. • It contributes to the development of universal rules for the structural presentation of information • It increases the independence of the student from the teacher. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]