ALBERT

Description: The latest Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) systems are able to provide innovative methods for user interaction, but their full potential can only be achieved when they are able to exchange bidirectional information with the physical world that surround them, including the objects that belong to the Internet of Things (IoT). The problem is that elements like AR display devices or IoT sensors/actuators often use heterogeneous technologies that make it difficult to intercommunicate them in an easy way, thus requiring a high degree of specialization to carry out such a task. This paper presents an open-source framework that eases the integration of AR and IoT devices as well as the transfer of information among them, both in real time and in a dynamic way. The proposed framework makes use of widely used standard protocols and open-source tools like MQTT, HTTPS or Node-RED. In order to illustrate the operation of the framework, this paper presents the implementation of a practical home automation example: an AR/MR application for energy consumption monitoring that allows for using a pair of Microsoft HoloLens smart glasses to interact with smart power outlets.

Description: Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR) devices have evolved significantly in the last years, providing immersive AR/MR experiences that allow users to interact with virtual elements placed on the real-world. However, to make AR/MR devices reach their full potential, it is necessary to go further and let them collaborate with the physical elements around them, including the objects that belong to the Internet of Things (IoT). Unfortunately, AR/MR and IoT devices usually make use of heterogeneous technologies that complicate their intercommunication. Moreover, the implementation of the intercommunication mechanisms requires involving specialized developers with have experience on the necessary technologies. To tackle such problems, this article proposes the use of a framework that makes it easy to integrate AR/MR and IoT devices, allowing them to communicate dynamically and in real time. The presented AR/MR-IoT framework makes use of standard and open-source protocols and tools like MQTT, HTTPS or Node-RED. After detailing the inner workings of the framework, it is illustrated its potential through a practical use case: a smart power socket that can be monitored and controlled through Microsoft HoloLens AR/MR glasses. The performance of such a practical use case is evaluated and it is demonstrated that the proposed framework, under normal operation conditions, enables to respond in less than 100 ms to interaction and data update requests.

Description: This paper presents the development of a novel Microsoft HoloLens collaborative application that allows shipyard operators to interact with a virtual clutch during its assembly in a real Turbine workshop. Such an Augmented Reality (AR) experience acts as a virtual guide while assembling different parts of a ship. In particular, the proposed application allows operators to position the clutch on a real environment and interact with it. The application also provides information about the documentation of each part of the clutch, showing its blueprints and physical measurements. The proposed AR application enables collaborative AR experiences, allowing users to visualize the same content and animations at the same time and interact simultaneously with 3D objects from multiple devices. Furthermore, the application is integrated with an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) framework, resulting on an AR-IIoT application that is able to receive and display real-time sensor data on information panels, as well as to trigger actions through actuators by making use of virtual user interfaces.

Description: Industry 4.0 has paved the way for a world where smart factories will automate and upgrade many processes through the use of some of the latest emerging technologies. One of such technologies is Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which have evolved a great deal in the last years in terms of technology (e.g., control units, sensors, UAV frames) and have significantly reduced their cost. UAVs can help industry in automatable and tedious tasks, like the ones performed on a regular basis for determining the inventory and for preserving item traceability. In such tasks, especially when it comes from untrusted third parties, it is essential to determine whether the collected information is valid or true. Likewise, ensuring data trustworthiness is a key issue in order to leverage Big Data analytics to supply chain efficiency and effectiveness. In such a case, blockchain, another Industry 4.0 technology that has become very popular in other fields like finance, has the potential to provide a higher level of transparency, security, trust and efficiency in the supply chain and enable the use of smart contracts. Thus, in this paper, we present the design and evaluation of a UAV-based system aimed at automating inventory tasks and keeping the traceability of industrial items attached to Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID) tags. To confront current shortcomings, such a system is developed under a versatile, modular and scalable architecture aimed to reinforce cyber security and decentralization while fostering external audits and big data analytics. Therefore, the system uses a blockchain and a distributed ledger to store certain inventory data collected by UAVs, validate them, ensure their trustworthiness and make them available to the interested parties. In order to show the performance of the proposed system, different tests were performed in a real industrial warehouse, concluding that the system is able to obtain the inventory data really fast in comparison to traditional manual tasks, while being also able to estimate the position of the items when hovering over them thanks to their tag’s signal strength. In addition, the performance of the proposed blockchain-based architecture was evaluated in different scenarios.

Description: Diabetes patients suffer from abnormal blood glucose levels, which can cause diverse health disorders that affect their kidneys, heart and vision. Due to these conditions, diabetes patients have traditionally checked blood glucose levels through Self-Monitoring of Blood Glucose (SMBG) techniques, like pricking their fingers multiple times per day. Such techniques involve a number of drawbacks that can be solved by using a device called Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM), which can measure blood glucose levels continuously throughout the day without having to prick the patient when carrying out every measurement. This article details the design and implementation of a system that enhances commercial CGMs by adding Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities to them that allow for monitoring patients remotely and, thus, warning them about potentially dangerous situations. The proposed system makes use of smartphones to collect blood glucose values from CGMs and then sends them either to a remote cloud or to distributed fog computing nodes. Moreover, in order to exchange reliable, trustworthy and cybersecure data with medical scientists, doctors and caretakers, the system includes the deployment of a decentralized storage system that receives, processes and stores the collected data. Furthermore, in order to motivate users to add new data to the system, an incentive system based on a digital cryptocurrency named GlucoCoin was devised. Such a system makes use of a blockchain that is able to execute smart contracts in order to automate CGM sensor purchases or to reward the users that contribute to the system by providing their own data. Thanks to all the previously mentioned technologies, the proposed system enables patient data crowdsourcing and the development of novel mobile health (mHealth) applications for diagnosing, monitoring, studying and taking public health actions that can help to advance in the control of the disease and raise global awareness on the increasing prevalence of diabetes.

Description: Industry 4.0 has paved the way for a world where smart factories will automate and upgrade many processes through the use of some of the latest emerging technologies. One such technology is Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), which have evolved a great deal in the last several years in terms of technology (e.g., control units, sensors, UAV frames) and have reduced significantly their cost. UAVs can help industry in automatable and tedious tasks, like the ones performed on a regular basis for determining the inventory and for preserving the traceability of certain items. Moreover, in such tasks, it is essential to determine whether the collected information is valid or true, especially when it comes from untrusted third-parties. In such a case, blockchain, another Industry 4.0 technology that has become very popular in other fields like finance, has the potential to provide a higher level of transparency, security, trust and efficiency in the supply chain and enable the use of smart contracts. Thus, in this paper, the design and preliminary results are presented of a UAV-based system aimed at automating the inventory and keeping the traceability of industrial items attached to Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID) tags. Such a system can use a blockchain to receive the inventory data collected by UAVs, validate them, ensure their trustworthiness and make them available to the interested parties.

Description: Climate change is driving new solutions to manage water more efficiently. Such solutions involve the development of smart irrigation systems where Internet of Things (IoT) nodes are deployed throughout large areas. In addition, in the mentioned areas, wireless communications can be difficult due to the presence of obstacles and metallic objects that block electromagnetic wave propagation totally or partially. This article details the development of a smart irrigation system able to cover large urban areas thanks to the use of Low-Power Wide-Area Network (LPWAN) sensor nodes based on LoRa and LoRaWAN. IoT nodes collect soil temperature/moisture and air temperature data, and control water supply autonomously, either by making use of fog computing gateways or by relying on remote commands sent from a cloud. Since the selection of IoT node and gateway locations is essential to have good connectivity and to reduce energy consumption, this article uses an in-house 3D-ray launching radio-planning tool to determine the best locations in real scenarios. Specifically, this paper provides details on the modeling of a university campus, which includes elements like buildings, roads, green areas, or vehicles. In such a scenario, simulations and empirical measurements were performed for two different testbeds: a LoRaWAN testbed that operates at 868 MHz and a testbed based on LoRa with 433 MHz transceivers. All the measurements agree with the simulation results, showing the impact of shadowing effects and material features (e.g., permittivity, conductivity) in the electromagnetic propagation of near-ground and underground LoRaWAN communications. Higher RF power levels are observed for 433 MHz due to the higher transmitted power level and the lower radio propagation losses, and even in the worst gateway location, the received power level is higher than the sensitivity threshold (−148 dBm). Regarding water consumption, the provided estimations indicate that the proposed smart irrigation system is able to reduce roughly 23% of the amount of used water just by considering weather forecasts. The obtained results provide useful guidelines for future smart irrigation developers and show the radio planning tool accuracy, which allows for optimizing the sensor network topology and the overall performance of the network in terms of coverage, cost, and energy consumption.

Description: Augmented Reality (AR) provides an alternative to the traditional forms of interaction between humans and machines, and facilitates the access to certain technologies to groups of people with special needs like children. For instance, in pediatric healthcare, it is important to help children to feel comfortable during medical procedures and tests that may be performed on them. To tackle such an issue with the help of AR-based solutions, this article presents the design, implementation and evaluation of a novel open-source collaborative framework that enables to develop teaching, training, and monitoring pediatric healthcare applications. Specifically, such a framework allows for building collaborative applications and shared experiences for AR devices, providing functionalities for connecting with other AR devices and enabling real-time visualization and simultaneous interaction with virtual objects. Since all the communications involved in AR interactions are handled by AR devices, the proposed collaborative framework is able to operate autonomously through a Local Area Network (LAN), thus requiring no cloud or external servers. In order to demonstrate the potential of the proposed framework, a practical use case application is presented. Such an application has been designed to motivate pediatric patients and to encourage them to increase their physical activity through AR games. The presented games do not require any previous configuration, as they use ARCore automatic surface detection technology. Moreover, the AR mobile gaming framework allows multiple players to engage in the same AR experience, so children can interact and collaborate among them sharing the same AR content. In addition, the proposed AR system provides a remote web application that is able to collect and to visualize data on patient use, aiming to provide healthcare professionals with qualified data about the mobility and mood of their patients through an intuitive and user-friendly web tool. Finally, to determine the performance of the proposed AR system, this article presents its evaluation in terms of latency and processing time. The results show that both times are low enough to provide a good user experience.