No abstract

This study proposes a modular data glove system to accurately and reliably capture hand kinematics. This data glove system's modular design enhances its flexibility. It can provide the hand's angular velocities, accelerations, and joint angles to physicians for adjusting rehabilitation treatments. Three validations-raw data verification, static angle verification, and dynamic angle verification-were conducted to verify the reliability and accuracy of the data glove. Furthermore, to ensure the wearability of the data glove, 15 healthy participants and 15 participants with stroke were recruited to test the data glove and fill out a questionnaire. The errors of the finger ROMs obtained from the fusion algorithm were less than 2°, proving that the fusion algorithm can measure the wearer's range of motion accurately. The result of the questionnaire shows the participants' high satisfaction with the data glove. Moreover, a comparison between the proposed data glove and related research shows that the proposed data glove is superior to other data glove systems.

Visually impaired people are often unaware of dangers in front of them, even in familiar environments. Furthermore, in unfamiliar environments, such people require guidance to reduce the risk of colliding with obstacles. This study proposes a simple smartphone-based guiding system for solving the navigation problems for visually impaired people and achieving obstacle avoidance to enable visually impaired people to travel smoothly from a beginning point to a destination with greater awareness of their surroundings. In this study, a computer image recognition system and smartphone application were integrated to form a simple assisted guiding system. Two operating modes, online mode and offline mode, can be chosen depending on network availability. When the system begins to operate, the smartphone captures the scene in front of the user and sends the captured images to the backend server to be processed. The backend server uses the faster region convolutional neural network algorithm or the you only look once algorithm to recognize multiple obstacles in every image, and it subsequently sends the results back to the smartphone. The results of obstacle recognition in this study reached 60%, which is sufficient for assisting visually impaired people in realizing the types and locations of obstacles around them.

Under the vigorous development of global anticipatory computing in recent years, there have been numerous applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in people’s daily lives. Learning analytics of big data can assist students, teachers, and school administrators to gain new knowledge and estimate learning information; in turn, the enhanced education contributes to the rapid development of science and technology. Education is sustainable life learning, as well as the most important promoter of science and technology worldwide. In recent years, a large number of anticipatory computing applications based on AI have promoted the training professional AI talent. As a result, this study aims to design a set of interactive robot-assisted teaching for classroom setting to help students overcoming academic difficulties. Teachers, students, and robots in the classroom can interact with each other through the ARCS motivation model in programming. The proposed method can help students to develop the motivation, relevance, and confidence in learning, thus enhancing their learning effectiveness. The robot, like a teaching assistant, can help students solving problems in the classroom by answering questions and evaluating students’ answers in natural and responsive interactions. The natural interactive responses of the robot are achieved through the use of a database of emotional big data (Google facial expression comparison dataset). The robot is loaded with an emotion recognition system to assess the moods of the students through their expressions and sounds, and then offer corresponding emotional responses. The robot is able to communicate naturally with the students, thereby attracting their attention, triggering their learning motivation, and improving their learning effectiveness.

Energy expenditure (EE) monitoring is crucial to tracking physical activity (PA). Accurate EE monitoring may help people engage in adequate activity and therefore avoid obesity and reduce the risk of chronic diseases. This study proposes a depth-camera-based system for EE estimation of PA in gyms. Most previous studies have used inertial measurement units for EE estimation. By contrast, the proposed system can be used to conveniently monitor subjects' treadmill workouts in gyms without requiring them to wear any devices. A total of 21 subjects were recruited for the experiment. Subjects' skeletal data acquired using the depth camera and oxygen consumption data simultaneously obtained using the K4b device was used to establish an EE predictive model. To obtain a robust EE estimation model, depth cameras were placed in the side view, rear side view, and rear view. A comparison of five different predictive models and these three camera locations showed that the multilayer perceptron model was the best predictive model and that placing the camera in the rear view provided the best EE estimation performance. The measured and predicted metabolic equivalents of task exhibited a strong positive correlation, with r = 0.94 and coefficient of determination r = 0.89. Furthermore, the mean absolute error was 0.61 MET, mean squared error was 0.67 MET, and root mean squared error was 0.76 MET. These results indicate that the proposed system is handy and reliable for monitoring user's EE when performing treadmill workouts.