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Mobile user interface (UI) design plays a very important role in determining an application that can be adopted by all types of users, especially those residing in rural areas. This review aims to provide a mapping of previously published studies on mobile UI design application for smallholder agriculture to be a smart farmer. The focus of this scoping review is on the design elements of the proposed UI, strategies of inquiry used and to find out if there is a UI design that involves geospatial context by published articles. The results show that interview and observation are the most common field study methods used to obtain information in designing mobile UI, and the most widely applied UI elements are audio and Interactive Voice Response (IVR). There are many user interface elements that can be used by farmers who have different skills level in dealing with mobile technology. Icon interface is an important element in designing mobile UI for rural farmers based on previous results. Other than that, the use of location function in mobile UI design shows an upward trend where three recent articles used location function to report crop pest and disease and determine the nearest market location. In addition, there is a need to design geospatial elements such as map for mobile UI that match the skills of rural farmers to support the fourth Industrial Revolution in agriculture to be a smart farmer.

Robotic arm is a reprogrammable and multifunctional manipulator design to assist human in various surroundings. It is able to overcome human inefficiency in performing repetitive task such as pick and place operation. Thus, industrial in assembly and manufacturing have widely integrated robotic arm into their assembling line to overcome the problem of human inefficiency. Internet of things (IoT) allow data to be exchange between devices through the connection of many devices. The integration of internet of things with robotic arm allows smart industry to be realized. The purpose of this research is to design and build a three degree of freedom robotic arm with a mechanical gripper. The robotic arm can be controlled remotely through android mobile device to perform pick and place operation while Matlab provides the graphical movement of the robotic arm as a feedback.

With the emergent of biometric technology, people are no longer afraid to keep their important things in the safe box or room or even facility. This is because; human beings have unique features that distinguish them with other people. The scheme is based on an information theory approach that decomposes face images into a small set of characteristic feature images called ‘Eigenfaces’, which are actually the principal components of the initial training set of face images. In this report, thorough explanation on design process of face recognition on bags locking mechanism will be elucidated. The results and analysis of the proposed design prototype also presented and explained. The platform for executing the algorithm is on the Raspberry Pi. There are two artificial intelligent techniques applied to manipulate and processing data which is fuzzy logic and neural networks. Both systems are interdependent with each other, so that it can calculate and analyse data precisely. The receive image from the camera is analysed through the Eigenfaces algorithm. The algorithm is using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) method which comprise of artificial neural network paradigm and also statistical paradigm.

Jackfruit is identified as targeted produced for premium fruit and vegetable (EPP 7). Meanwhile in Johor, jackfruit is the third biggest fruit produced in 2016. Jackfruit contains a lot of benefits which certainly good for living things and have been used in various sector such as medicine, food, anti-bacterial and anti-oxidant, antifungal effect, immunomodulatory effect and else. However, the existence of pests and diseases have threatened the productivity of jackfruit plant particularly in tropical countries including Malaysia. There are many factors that can affect the occurrence of pests and plant diseases of jackfruit such as shoot borers, bark borers, mealy bug and scale insects, blossoms and fruit rots and bacterial die-back. Several studies have been devoted to model the plant pests and diseases epidemiology, though the contexts that focus in tropical environment and jackfruit plant are limited. Therefore, this paper aims to discuss abiotic factors and spatial methods that have been used to define dispersal pattern and relationship between abiotic factors including major climatic variables with plant pests and diseases occurrence data, particularly in tropical climate. This paper could be used as a basis to understand the epidemiological models in combating pest and plant disease and to support towards the effective management of jackfruit pests and diseases in tropical countries, particularly Malaysia.

Rural hollowing is a recent geographic phenomenon that has received significant attention in China, which experienced rapid urbanization. It is formed due to many houses was kept empty by the owner and a lot of new rural house were built outside the village and retaining the old ones in the inner village. It has led to the wasteful use of land resources and abandoned the houses. The purpose of this paper is to review recent research on the manifestation of rural hollowing phenomenon around the world. In this regard, is revise done based on two objectives: Firstly, to identify each manifestation of rural hollowing and secondly to examine the characteristics of each manifestation. The review made mainly in accordance with point researchers findings particularly on the Phenomenon of Rural Hollowing in rural China, Iran, Europe, and other developed countries or regions. The review found that the problems of rural hollowing manifest themselves in the following aspect: land hollowing (LH); population hollowing (PH); economic hollowing (EH); physical hollowing (PhH); hollowing of infrastructure and social services (IH); and cultural hollowing (CH). Each of the manifestations has its own characteristics in order to categorize each of the manifestations of rural hollowing. The review is particularly useful especially in Malaysia, and need for further research in Malaysia according to the problems of vacant and idle houses in the rural area.

The Royal Belum forest reserve is one of the oldest tropical rainforests in the world and it is one of the largest virgin forest reserves in Malaysia. However, not many studies have been conducted to understand the ecology of this forest. In this study we estimated the aboveground biomass (AGB) of the forest using diameter at breast height (DBH) and height of trees (h), tree species and hemispherical photographs of tree canopy. We estimated AGB using five allometric equations. Our results demonstrated that the AGB given by the one tree species specific allometric equation does not show any significant differences from the values given by the non-tree species specific allometric equations at tree and plot levels. The AGB of Intsia bijuga species, Koompassia malaccensis species and Shorea genera were comparatively higher, owing to their greater wood density, DBH and h. This has added importance because some of these species are categorized as threatened species. Our results demonstrated that mean AGB values in this forest (293.16 t ha-1) are the highest compared to some studies of other areas in Malaysia, tropical Africa and tropical Bazilian Amazonia, implying that the Royal Belum forest reserve, is an important carbon reservoir.

The adoption and use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) offers new ways to improve the access, equity and quality of education globally. Mobile technologies have significant potential to support teaching and learning processes as well as improve the literacy of citizens, even among indigenous and underprivileged populations. Therefore, this paper assesses the level of literacy (read and write) of the indigenous community in Royal Belum State Park, Perak using structured observation on four levels of literacy tests. Comparison analyses were conducted to assess the level of reading and writing on both paper and mobile platforms. This study found that most respondents have a sufficient foundation in basic literacy (reading and writing simple texts). Their response time to read texts on a smartphone was faster compared to paper-based text. However, the response time to copy a text on a smartphone was longer than the response time when performing a writing test on the paper-based version. This study suggests a positive sign of literacy improvement of indigenous people, particularly in Royal Belum area on a traditional paper based version, despite a low level of digital literacy that requires further attention to be addressed by stakeholders.

Web 2.0 and the proliferation of built-in Global Positioning System (GPS) on smartphones have influenced the increase of geo-crowdsourcing activities in a number of different contexts. The aim of t...

Lowland tropical rainforests have the largest aboveground biomass compared to other types of tropical rainforest. Furthermore, lowland tropical rainforests have a high density of trees and various types of vegetation species. Due to the limitation in measurement method that occurs in lowland tropical rainforest, the information regarding aboveground biomass is very limited to small-scaled area compared with the existing method based on experimental plot tree census. Hence, this study suggested the upscaling method that enables the estimation of biomass for a larger area using a small size experimental plot. This study is conducted at Sungai Papan Royal Belum Forest Reserve, Perak with an area approximate to 22 hectares and based on the experimental plot of 100 × 100 m. Eight vegetation indices obtained from UAV multispectral images and field data are used to determine the best upscaling equation. This study successfully determined that TAGB VS SR gives the highest correlation with = 0.7224, RMSE= 1.1700 and t-test= 15.647/100. The final output of this research study shows the upscaling map of aboveground biomass concentration at Sungai Papan, Royal Belum Forest Reserve

Real-time update is very important in Advanced Public Transportation System (APTS). However, due to the lack of information on the bus's estimated time of arrival (ETA), current location and occupancy (number of seats available) commuters are reluctant to use public transport. The study in this paper focuses on developing a bus tracking system that can track, display the location of the bus in real time and estimate the bus arrival time to the next bus stop. Monitoring system that consists of tracking device and web-based application for monitoring purposes are developed. GPS-based tracking device is used as location tracking mechanism and the location is reported for every 1 second to cloud database. Web application is developed as the graphical user interface (GUI) to assist user in monitoring real-time location of the bus and plan their journey based on information provided such as bus routes, bus stop number and bus arrival time. The updated location of the bus is plotted into Google Maps. Thus, based on result it was found that the proposed method is able to track and monitor the real-time location of the bus and able to estimate the bus's arrival time to the next bus stop.

Today, spaced-based technology is more than sufficient to provide the useful data needed for everyday services, such as communication, television, Global Positioning System, weather forecasting and others. The data obtained from space-based technology usually comes in the form of big data and are stored in heterogeneous formats. Hence, handling this data is time consuming and complex because traditional database tools and applications have difficulty processing large data endeavours formats. Thus, information sharing and exchanges over the internet are becoming more complicated. Linked data is considered as one of the best practices for exposing, sharing, publishing and connecting structured data on web. Therefore, this paper attempt to demonstrate the use of linked data platform namely Datalift in providing access to oceanography archive spatial datasets on the web. With Datalift, Resource Description Framework data format is generated from the input raw data with a chosen ontology. The published data could be accessed by end users and may be linked to other data sources to enrich the spatial information available over the web.

This paper presents the Coastal Altimetry Waveform Retracking Expert System (CAWRES), a novel method to optimise the Jason satellite altimetric sea levels from multiple retracking solutions. CAWRES’ aim is to achieve the highest possible accuracy of coastal sea levels, thus bringing measurement of radar altimetry data closer to the coast. The principles of CAWRES are twofold. The first is to reprocess altimeter waveforms using the optimal retracker, which is sought based on the analysis from a fuzzy expert system. The second is to minimise the relative offset in the retrieved sea levels caused by switching from one retracker to another using a neural network. The innovative system is validated against geoid height and tide gauges in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia for Jason-1 and Jason-2 satellite missions. The regional investigations have demonstrated that the CAWRES can effectively enhance the quality of 20 Hz sea level data and recover up to 16% more data than the standard MLE4 retracker over the tested region. Comparison against tide gauge indicates that the CAWRES sea levels are more reliable than those of Sensor Geophysical Data Records (SGDR) products, because the former has a higher (≥0.77) temporal correlation and smaller (≤19 cm) root mean square errors. The results demonstrate that the CAWRES can be applied to coastal regions elsewhere as well as other satellite altimeter missions.

Loss in crop production gives a significant impact to food security. The decreasing in crops production has produced imbalance between the food demand of world population and the global agriculture output. There are many factors that may affect agriculture productivity. Abiotic and biotic constrains including water scarcity, poor soils, unsuitable temperatures and the pests, diseases and weeds attacking crops are among the causes that reduce the productivity of food crops. Hence, these lead to the low efficiencies of input use, suppressed crop output, and ultimately reduced food security. The plant pests, diseases and weeds have given significant impact on plant health and causing a great loss in crop production. Therefore, this paper presents a comprehensive review from the available literatures to provide understanding of the role of geospatial technology in combating plant pests and diseases outbreaks. Geospatial data and technologies including Geographic Information System, remote sensing and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and have been used in collecting, mapping, analysing the distribution and predicting the events. The geospatial technology has been used from the early tasks of surveying the status of crop health until forecasting when the disease likely to be occurred. Although many big challenges are facing by the global and local agricultures to produce good outputs and to secure the world food population, however the rich of geospatial data and advancement of technologies have playing certain roles, particularly assisting the decision makers in forming strategies for combating various pests and diseases that affecting plant health and food crops.

Currently, Human Machine System (HMS) considers being a proven technology, which has gained an important role in various human activities. One of the most recent developments in this area is Human Adaptive Mechatronics (HAM) approach for enhancing human skills. This approach therefore is different compared to an ordinary HMS, in terms of its ability to adapt to the changes in its environment and in the human changing level of skills. The crucial issue in HAM is in evaluating the human skills level on machine operation. Therefore, this paper discussed about the comparisons between the proposed formula to quantify and classify the skill index of human operator with the Fuzzy Logic and other formula. An experiment using a driving car simulator is carried out to clarify those formulas in machine manipulation system. From the comparison it is found that the proposed formulas give better result compared to Fuzzy Logic System and other formula.

Indoor air quality is an issue often neglected by the public. One of the main issues is due to the unawareness of importance of scheduled maintenance of Heating, Ventilation and Air Condition (HVAC) ducting systems. A contaminated ventilation duct is able to spread biological and non-biological pollutants throughout the building and result in Sick Building Syndrome (SBS). Accumulated dust can be the spreading medium for contaminants. Moreover, the size of ducts is often small and difficult to be examined. In this paper, a mobile inspection robot solution is developed to overcome the problem. It is equipped with a camera to provide forward vision and a mechanical gripper to take samples of suspected harmful or contagious substances. It is also able to brush off the dust in the duct if necessary. Due to the long distance needed to be travelled by the tethered cable, a User Datagram Protocol (UDP) is used to ensure the command signal. The robot is expected to be able to maneuver in the ducts and capture live video for the operator.

Spectral variability analysis has been carried out on in-situ hyperspectral remote sensing data for 20 tree species available in tropical forest in Malaysia. Five different spectral ranges have been tested to evaluate the influence of intra-species spectral variability at specific spectral range given by different spatial scales (i.e. leaf to branch scales). The degree of intra-species spectral variability was not constant among different spectral ranges where the influence of spatial scale towards intra-species spectral variability at these spectral ranges was found increasing from leaf to branch scale. The ratio of leaves to non-photosynthetic tissues has made branch scale significantly influent the intra-species spectral variability. Results have shown that a specific spectral range was species sensitive on the intra-species and inter-species spectral variability in this study. This study also suggested the use of species sensitive wavelengths extracted from specific spectral range in hyperspectral remote sensing data in order to achieve good accuracy in tree species classification.

Implementation of home automation using the latest technology gives us more convenience, security and safety. Smartphone affordability increases every year and smartphones have begun to play important roles in our daily lives due to their size and portability. Google’s Android operating system (OS) is one of the leading and most preferred smartphones. Controlling home appliances by using an Android phone gives users the ability to control their home appliances anywhere and at any time while at home and saves time spent in searching for the remote control unit of home automation systems since the user’s phone is usually kept close at hand. This project presents the design and implementation of a low cost prototype of a Bluetooth-based home automation system using an Android phone. The design uses an Arduino Mega 2560-R3 board and the home appliances are physically connected to input/output ports of this board via relays. Cytron BlueBee is used to establish wireless communication between them. BluetoothHome, an Android application, is developed to provide a user friendly graphical user interface (GUI) for the remote control of home appliances.

This paper discusses the development of the designed driving simulator for human adaptive mechatronics (HAM) application. Driving simulator is used to clarify the effect of skill, track patterns, disturbances and experience in the human machine system (HMS). There are three graphical user interfaces (GUI) of programs in driving simulator, which is the ‘MapMaker’, the ‘Car Driving Simulator’ and the ‘Error Computational program’. The MapMaker program is used to design the tracks and comparing the tracks with the paths. Then, the Car Driving Simulator is mainly used to collect the data from the human subjects. Lastly, the Error Computational program is used to calculate the error between the paths of each subject and the actual tracks.

The use of Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) in collecting, sharing and disseminating geospatially referenced information on the Web is increasingly common. The potentials of this localized and collective information have been seen to complement the maintenance process of authoritative mapping data sources and in realizing the development of Digital Earth. The main barrier to the use of this data in supporting this bottom up approach is the credibility (trust), completeness, accuracy, and quality of both the data input and outputs generated. The only feasible approach to assess these data is by relying on an automated process. This paper describes a conceptual model of indicators (parameters) and practical approaches to automated assess the credibility of information contributed through the VGI including map mashups, Geo Web and crowd – sourced based applications. There are two main components proposed to be assessed in the conceptual model – metadata and data. The metadata component comprises the indicator of the hosting (websites) and the sources of data / information. The data component comprises the indicators to assess absolute and relative data positioning, attribute, thematic, temporal and geometric correctness and consistency. This paper suggests approaches to assess the components. To assess the metadata component, automated text categorization using supervised machine learning is proposed. To assess the correctness and consistency in the data component, we suggest a matching validation approach using the current emerging technologies from Linked Data infrastructures and using third party reviews validation. This study contributes to the research domain that focuses on the credibility, trust and quality issues of data contributed by web citizen providers.