In this work, a Modified Vector Field Histogram (MVFH) has been developed to improve path planning and obstacle avoidance for a wheeled driven mobile robot. It permits the detection of unknown obstacle to avoid collisions by simultaneously a steering the mobile robot toward the target; a regular grid map representation for a work space environment is caurried out. A Neural Network (NN) model is...

In the literature, Spherobot refers to a mobile robot with a spherical exo-skeleton and a propulsion mechanism that uses unbalance masses in a tetrahedral arrangement. A modified design of Spherobot, that is better suited to fabrication, is presented in this paper. The modified propulsion mechanism and other components of the design are discussed in detail to highlight the challenges of fabrica...

Seniors show deficits of dual-task walking when the second task has high visual-processing requirements. Here, we evaluate whether similar deficits emerge when the second task is discrete rather than continuous, as is often the case in everyday life. Subjects walked in a hallway, while foot proprioception was either perturbed by vibration or unperturbed. At unpredictable intervals, they were pr...

The paper describes a scheme based on image identification and fuzzy logic control for following a person by a mobile robot in previously unknown and rough environments. The mobile robot is equipped with a pan-tilt-zoom camera and sonar range sensors. The person detection system uses color and shape of the person to be followed, and provides key characteristics of the person’s image to a fuzzy ...

The current study described RN and patient care technician (PCT) communication in centralized and hybrid decentralized workstation designs using hands-free communication technology and infrared locator badge technology to facilitate communication. New construction of an oncology unit provided the opportunity to compare staff communication in two different workstation designs. Observations and q...

In virtual environments, perceived egocentric distances are often underestimated when compared to the same distance judgments in the real world. The research presented in this paper explores two possible causes for this reduced distance perception in virtual environments: (1) real-time computer graphics rendering, and (2) immersive display technology. Our experiment compared egocentric distance...

RF (Radio Frequency) Fingerprinting for indoor localization using wireless local area networks attracted significant attention throughout the last decade. A severe drawback of this approach however is the laborious effort to calibrate the radio map. Especially in case of environmental changes recalibration becomes necessary. The main focus of our research project WIPoS (Wireless Indoor Position...

Monitoring the push force is an important asset during wheelchair (WC) sports training. However, current instrumented wheels cannot be used without significantly altering the WC-user dynamics. Moreover, the push force could not be estimated directly from the WC acceleration because of the strong influence of the upper body movement on the WC-user dynamics. In this paper, we present a new method...

We developed a machine vision system to automatically capture the dynamics of pedestrians under four different traffic scenarios. By considering the overhead view of each pedestrian as a digital object, the system processes the image sequences to track the pedestrians. Considering the perspective effect of the camera lens and the projected area of the hallway at the top-view scene, the distance...

Title: Environmental Correlates of Efficiency and Safety in Emergency Departments Funds: Academy of Architecture for Health Foundation (AAHF) Research Grant and Herman Miller Grant Period: January 2010 to October 2012 Collaborators: Herman Miller, Synurgy Healthcare Solutions Location: Four emergency departments in large US hospitals Findings: 16 domains of physical design decisions influence s...