The Architecture, Engineering, Construction, and Operations (AECO) industry is constantly searching for new methods for increasing efficiency and productivity. Facility managers, as a part of the owner/operator role, work in complex and dynamic environments where critical decisions are constantly made. This decision-making process and its consequent performance can be improved by enhancing Situation Awareness (SA) of the facility managers through new digital technologies. SA, as a user-centered approach for understanding facility managers’ information requirement, together with Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) was used for developing an Ambient Intelligent (AmI) environment for accessing building information in facilities. Augmented Reality has been considered as a viable option to reduce inefficiencies of data overload by providing facility managers with an SA-based tool for visualizing their “real-world” environment with added interactive data. Moreover, Building Information Modeling (BIM) was used as the data repository of the required building information. A pilot study was done to study the integration between SA, MAR, and BIM. InfoSPOT (Information Surveyed Point for Observation and Tracking) was developed as a low-cost solution that leverage current AR technology, showing that it is possible to take an idealized BIM model and integrate its data and 3D information in an MAR environment. A within-subjects user participation experiment and analysis was also conducted to evaluate the usability of the InfoSPOT in facility management related practices. The outcome of statistical analysis (a one-way repeated measure ANOVA) revealed that on average the mobile AR-based environment was relatively seamless and efficient for all participants in the study. Building on the InfoSPOT pilot study, an in-depth research was conducted in the area of healthcare facility management, integrating SA, MAR, and BIM to develop an AmI environment where facility mangers’ information requirement would be superimposed on their real-word view of the facility they maintain and would be interactively accessible through current mobile handheld technology. This AmI environment was compared to the traditional approach of conducting preventive and corrective maintenance using paper-based forms. The purpose of this part of the research was to investigate the hypothesis of “bringing 3D BIM models of building components in an AR environment and making it accessible through handheld mobile devices would help the facility managers to locate those components easier and faster compared to facility managers’ paper-based approach”. The result of this study shows that this innovative application of AR and integrating it with BIM to enhance the SA has the potential to improve construction practices, and in this case, facility management.

Este trabalho apresenta o desenvolvimento de um sistema reconfigurável, baseado em OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) para gateway residenciais utilizando-se da tecnologia FemtoJava, com o objetivo de automatizar a descoberta de serviços. Como sistemas de automação residencial/predial normalmente incluem produtos de diferentes fabricantes e possuem protocolos de comunicação diferentes, é necessário o uso de um agente que gerencie essa comunicação. Para que isso ocorra com sucesso, a OSGi Aliança oferece um conjunto de especificações numa plataforma aberta, em Java, para a entrega de vários tipos de serviços aos usuários finais. Utilizando as características do framework OSGi focados em ambientes inteligentes, é proposto um novo sistema de controle através desta arquitetura orientada a serviços para gateway residencial. O sistema foi implementado em uma plataforma reconfigurável da família Xilinx com o auxílio da ferramenta de síntese ISE. O trabalho também apresenta a validação da arquitetura proposta em um estudo de caso utilizando-se de dois módulos para interagir com o meio simulando um sistema de controle de temperatura. / This work presents the development of a reconfigurable system based on OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) home gateway using the FemtoJava technology, aiming to automate the discovery of services. Automation home systems usually include products from different manufacturers and have different communication protocols, it is necessary to use an agent to manage this communication. For this to occur successfully, OSGi Alliance offers a range of specifications in an open platform, Java, for the delivery of various types of services to end users. Using OSGi framework features, intelligent environments focused on a new control system using this architecture targeted to services for residential gateway. The system was implemented on a reconfigurable platform family with the help of Xilinx ISE synthesis tool. The work also presents the validation of the architecture proposed in a case study using the two modules to interact with the environment simulating a temperature control system.

The elderly population worldwide has an increasing expectation of wellbeing and life expectancy. The monitoring of the majority of elderly people on an individual basis, in a medical sense, will not be a viable proposition in the future due to the projected numbers of individuals requiring such activity. The expectation is that the infrastructure available will not be adequate to meet all the anticipated requirements and subsequently people will have to live at home with inadequate care. A new global objective that aims towards enhancing the quality of life of the elderly is being supported by extensive research. This research has been taking place in the field of ambient intelligence (AmI), considering factors including more comfort, improved health, enhanced security for the elderly, and facilitating the living in their homes longer. Prior research has shown a need for accelerated expansion in the ambient intelligence domain. To that end this work presents a novel learning technique for intelligent agents that can be used in Ambient Intelligent Environments (AIEs). The main objective of this work is to add knowledge to the AmI domain and to explore the practical applications within this research field. The added knowledge is accomplished through the development of an ambient intelligent health care environment that allows a practical assessment of the human well-being to take place. This is achieved by transforming the elderly living environment into an intelligent pseudo robot within which they reside to better understand the human wellbeing. The system developed aims to provide evidence that a level of automated care is both possible and practical. This care is for those with chronic physical or mental disabilities who have difficulty in their interactions with standardised living spaces. The novel integrated hardware and software architecture provides personalised environmental monitoring. It also provides control facilities based on the patient‘s physical and emotional wellness in their home. Entitled Health Adaptive Online Emotion Fuzzy Agent (HAOEFA), the system provides a non-invasive, self-learning, intelligent controlling system that constantly adapts to the requirements of an individual. The system has the ability to model and learn the user behaviour in order to control the environment on their behalf. This is achieved with respect to the changing environmental conditions as well as the user‘s health and emotional states being detected. A change of emotion can have a direct impact on the system‘s control taking place in the environment. Thus HAOEFA combines an emotion recognition system within a fuzzy logic learning and adaptation based controller. The emotion recogniser detects the occupant‘s emotions upon the changes of the physiological data being monitored. In addition to acting as an output to the occupant‘s physiological changes, the detected emotion also acts as input to the whole situation being observed by HAOEFA. This allows HAOEFA to control the Glam i-HomeCare on the user‘s behalf with respect to their emotional status. The system developed incorporates real-time, continuous adaptations to facilitate any changes to the occupant‘s behaviour within the environment. It also allows the rules to be adapted and extended online, assisting a life-long learning technique as the environmental conditions change and the user behaviour adjusts with it. HAOEFA uses the fuzzy c-means clustering methodology for extracting membership functions (MFs) before building its set of fuzzy rules. These MFs together with the rules base constitute a major part of the proposed system. It has the ability to learn and model the individual human behaviour with respect to their emotional status. Following the provided literature review and the presentation of Fuzzy logic MFs (see section 3.3). The thesis presents two chosen unobtrusive self-learning techniques that are used in the development of the intelligent fuzzy system. Each approach combines an emotion recogniser with a fuzzy logic learning and adaptation based technique for systems that can be used in AIEs. A comparison of two different MFs designs is contrasted showing the impact they have on the system learning ability. A number of carefully designed experiments were performed by volunteers in the Glam i-HomeCare test-bed at the University of South Wales to examine the system‘s ability to learn the occupant‘s behaviour with respect to their health and emotional states. The experimental procedures were performed twice by each volunteer, while maintaining the same behavioural actions to compare how much the design of fuzzy membership functions can impact the learning process and the number of rules created by the system. Besides evaluating both systems‘ emotion recognition accuracies and comparing them to one another for each occupant, the empirical outcomes show the potential of the approach in assisting the extension of independent living. The results demonstrate how the type-1 fuzzy system both learnt and adapted to each occupant‘s behaviour with respect to their health and emotional state whilst assessing multiple environmental conditions.

Este trabalho apresenta o desenvolvimento de um sistema reconfigurável, baseado em OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) para gateway residenciais utilizando-se da tecnologia FemtoJava, com o objetivo de automatizar a descoberta de serviços. Como sistemas de automação residencial/predial normalmente incluem produtos de diferentes fabricantes e possuem protocolos de comunicação diferentes, é necessário o uso de um agente que gerencie essa comunicação. Para que isso ocorra com sucesso, a OSGi Aliança oferece um conjunto de especificações numa plataforma aberta, em Java, para a entrega de vários tipos de serviços aos usuários finais. Utilizando as características do framework OSGi focados em ambientes inteligentes, é proposto um novo sistema de controle através desta arquitetura orientada a serviços para gateway residencial. O sistema foi implementado em uma plataforma reconfigurável da família Xilinx com o auxílio da ferramenta de síntese ISE. O trabalho também apresenta a validação da arquitetura proposta em um estudo de caso utilizando-se de dois módulos para interagir com o meio simulando um sistema de controle de temperatura. / This work presents the development of a reconfigurable system based on OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) home gateway using the FemtoJava technology, aiming to automate the discovery of services. Automation home systems usually include products from different manufacturers and have different communication protocols, it is necessary to use an agent to manage this communication. For this to occur successfully, OSGi Alliance offers a range of specifications in an open platform, Java, for the delivery of various types of services to end users. Using OSGi framework features, intelligent environments focused on a new control system using this architecture targeted to services for residential gateway. The system was implemented on a reconfigurable platform family with the help of Xilinx ISE synthesis tool. The work also presents the validation of the architecture proposed in a case study using the two modules to interact with the environment simulating a temperature control system.

Este trabalho apresenta o desenvolvimento de um sistema reconfigurável, baseado em OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) para gateway residenciais utilizando-se da tecnologia FemtoJava, com o objetivo de automatizar a descoberta de serviços. Como sistemas de automação residencial/predial normalmente incluem produtos de diferentes fabricantes e possuem protocolos de comunicação diferentes, é necessário o uso de um agente que gerencie essa comunicação. Para que isso ocorra com sucesso, a OSGi Aliança oferece um conjunto de especificações numa plataforma aberta, em Java, para a entrega de vários tipos de serviços aos usuários finais. Utilizando as características do framework OSGi focados em ambientes inteligentes, é proposto um novo sistema de controle através desta arquitetura orientada a serviços para gateway residencial. O sistema foi implementado em uma plataforma reconfigurável da família Xilinx com o auxílio da ferramenta de síntese ISE. O trabalho também apresenta a validação da arquitetura proposta em um estudo de caso utilizando-se de dois módulos para interagir com o meio simulando um sistema de controle de temperatura. / This work presents the development of a reconfigurable system based on OSGi (Open Services Gateway Initiative) home gateway using the FemtoJava technology, aiming to automate the discovery of services. Automation home systems usually include products from different manufacturers and have different communication protocols, it is necessary to use an agent to manage this communication. For this to occur successfully, OSGi Alliance offers a range of specifications in an open platform, Java, for the delivery of various types of services to end users. Using OSGi framework features, intelligent environments focused on a new control system using this architecture targeted to services for residential gateway. The system was implemented on a reconfigurable platform family with the help of Xilinx ISE synthesis tool. The work also presents the validation of the architecture proposed in a case study using the two modules to interact with the environment simulating a temperature control system.