Gamification is an area that has attracted a substantial amount of interest in recent years and is something that can be applied almost everywhere. Health is also an area that is frequently discussed regarding how a person's health and daily exercise can be improved. Applying gamification to motivate people to exercise more is something that has been done before although they are usually marketed as health application. What if an application's main purpose was not to count the amount calories burnt but instead the exercise is an additional part? In this thesis you will find the development of a prototype that is a gamified Android application with the purpose to motivate people to walk more in stairs. In order to develop an application there was a need for a stairstep counter to count the number of steps a person has taken in a stair. Hence a stairstep counter was developed using the open source machine learning framework, TensorFlow, with classification and neural networks. The counter uses the y- and z-axis of the mobile accelerometer to classify if a movement of a person was a step or not. It was trained with a custom dataset that was created using data from walking in a stair and data collected from other movements. Resulting stairstep counter used in the application is a counter that counts stairsteps rather accurately. The final result of this thesis was a mobile application that uses animation and competition elements to enhance a person's stair walk experience.

Stair climbing is a common activity encountered in daily living. Stair ascent is a demanding task that requires a large range of motion of the joints, strong muscle strength, good cardiovascular fitness, and fine balance control. Given this, the activity can be difficult for different populations that lack muscle strength and coordination. To train and assist people in this activity, several robotic platforms have been proposed, but these limit the natural motion of the individual. For example, these devices fix the placement of the feet and reduce the natural swing of the lower limbs. This makes it difficult to manipulate the center of mass, which is crucial to stair ascent. In this dissertation, we present a novel parallel cable-driven platform in which the end effector is the user’s pelvis; the stairmill tethered pelvic assist device. This architecture allows the user to retain their natural movement and relation between the feet and the center of mass, all while applying three dimensional forces on the pelvis during continuous stair ascent on a revolving stairmill. In this work, we show the design, fabrication, and validation of this robotic system. Various force strategies were explored during stairmill ascent using this robotic platform. A characterization experiment was conducted to investigate gait performance and muscle coordination. Two simple interventions were tested to show the potential for long-term training program. This work sheds light on the different strategies of stair climbing and how we can use cable driven platforms to train and assist individuals during this challenging task. The knowledge gained by this work allows for the expansion of designing training paradigms for stair climbing with natural motion. These can assist individuals in improving their quality of life.

Every day the city plays out its spectacle unnoticed. This quotidian context is one which is full of complexity, spontaneity and possibility. It is here that architecture can engage with both the city and its user, space and experience; challenging conventional architectural typologies. It is within public space, that architecture can both enhance and celebrate the everyday. This project investigates all of these aspects within the city of Pretoria and more specifically along Van der Walt Street, focusing on the urban cavity at Munitoria. Surveillance is conceptually used to experience this spectacle, on multiple levels of enterpretation, where the architecture is reduced to support both the concept of surveillance and its experience. Copyright 2011, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Alkayyali, A 2011, Liminal public infrastructure : a typology of public space for everyday performances, MArch(Prof) dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-11252011-112216 / > C12/4/35/gm / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2011. / Architecture / unrestricted

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The thesis of this project is to develop a language of architecture for the design of a rural house. Parameters for this language are specified through program, ideas about living in a country home, and the importance of integrating the building with its site. The parameters are reaffirmed through the materials and elements of architecture. In order to develop a cohesive language, four houses have been designed for four different sites. Each house implements the specified parameters in a manner appropriate to the setting of the surrounding landscape. The houses themselves become a transition between the inside and the outside and between the natural and the man-made. Thus this thesis is: Four Houses - A Language of Transition from Earth to Sky. Our experience-space is necessarily in conflict with the space of nature. The space that nature offers us rises above the ground and is oriented entirely towards the earth's surface. The contrast between the mass of the earth below and the space of the air above, which meet at the surface of the earth, is the primary datum of this (experience) space. Dom H. Van Der Laan, "Architectonic Space" (E.J. Brill, 1983), p. 5 / Master of Architecture

Yes / Background: Falls sustained when descending stairs are the leading cause of accidental death in older adults. Highly visible edge highlighters/friction strips (often set back from the tread edge) are sometimes used to improve stair safety, but there is no evidence for the usefulness of either. Objective: To determine whether an edge highlighter and its location relative to the tread edge affect foot placement/clearance and accidental foot contacts when descending stairs. Method: Sixteen older adults (mean ± 1 SD age; 71 ± 7 years) with normal vision (experiment 1) and eight young adults (mean ± 1 SD age; 24 ± 4 years) with visual impairment due to simulated age-related cataract (experiment 2) completed step descent trials during which a high contrast edge highlighter was either not present, placed flush with the tread edge, or set back from the edge by 10 mm or 30 mm. Foot placement/ clearance and the number of accidental foot contacts were compared across conditions. Results: In experiment 1, a highlighter set back by 30 mm led to a reduction in final foot placement (p b 0.001) and foot clearance (p b 0.001) compared to a highlighter placed flush with the tread edge, and the percentage of foot clearances that were less than 5 mm increased from 2% (abutting) to 17% (away30). In experiment 2, a highlighter placed flushwith the tread edge led to a decrease in within-subject variability in final foot placement (p = 0.004) and horizontal foot clearance (p = 0.022), a decrease in descent duration (p = 0.009), and a decrease in the number of low clearances (b5 mm, from 8% to 0%) and the number of accidental foot contacts (15% to 3%) when compared to a tread edge with no highlighter present. Conclusions: Changes to foot clearance parameters as a result of highlighter presence and position suggest that stairswith high-contrast edge highlighters positioned flushwith the tread edgewill improve safety on stairs, particularly for those with age-related visual impairment.

Dans les récits médiévaux, la réalité littéraire du décor est avant tout l'expérience imaginaire qu'introduit l'acte de lecture, avant d'être instrument qui permet au lecteur de réaliser l'image. Dans notre étude, il nous importe de préciser les éléments descriptifs, naturels et architecturaux, ou les visions du décor servant de cadres aux romans médiévaux. Avec une grande économie de moyens, la langue médiévale dit tout sur le sujet. En effet le stéréotype fonctionne toujours parfaitement, mais nous avons aussi de belles, brèves – mais énergiques – descriptions de châteaux et de villes. Les éléments du paysage peuvent s'ordonner en un panorama cohérent qui sait se mettre au service de l'action. Répondant aux nécessités du récit et sous forme de mentions généralement brèves, nous voyons apparaître peu à peu les éléments constitutifs des décors, naturels et urbains. Les rapides indications sont celles qui font apparaître le mieux la réalité d'un château ou d'une ville des XIIe et XIIIe siècles, telle qu'un romancier pouvait les présenter et les donner à voir à son public. / For a reader of medieval narratives the literary of the scenery, is in the first place an imaginary experience introduced by the act of reading and only subsequently it serves the role of an instrument necessary to reconstruct the image. In the present study, I discuss and reflect upon the natural and architectural elements of description and also the visions of the scenery recurrent in the medieval novel. The medieval language is extremely efficient in its descriptions of subject. The stereotypes are ever present, though punctuated by beautiful, short, yet vivid, descriptions of castles and cities. The elements of the landscape at times form a coherent panoramic setting for the action. Brief descriptions and mentions of the elements of the scenery, both natural and urban, appear as they are called for by the narrative. Such short indications appear to best show the reality of the castles or cities of XII and XIII century.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Delaware, 2008. / Principal faculty advisor: David A. Barlow, Dept. of Health, Nutrition, & Exercise Sciences. Includes bibliographical references.

Bakgrund: Infrastruktur och hur vi väljer att bygga våra städer styr befolkningens aktivitetsmönster. Infrastrukturen och tekniken har utvecklats i samhället och gett alternativa tillvägagångssätt att ta sig upp och ner mellan olika våningsplan. Fler människor väljer rulltrapporna och hissen före trapporna och går miste om de positiva effekterna som är kopplade till vardaglig trappgång. Syfte: Syftet med studien var att undersöka om det gick att påverka människors beteende att ta trappan istället för rulltrappan, genom att förändra miljön med en trappmålning. Metod: Studien var en prospektiv, kvasiexperimentell, deskriptiv interventionsstudie med ett konsekutivt urval. De personer som passerade trapporna/rulltrapporna under en förutbestämd tidsperiod studerades. Mätningarna gjordes med hjälp av ett system för trafikmätningar(OTUS3D) och pågick under tre veckor. Först mättes en baseline under vecka ett, målning av trappan under vecka två samt mätning för interventionen vecka tre. Resultatsammanfattning: Denna studie visade ingen förbättring gällande beteendeförändring hos fotgängare. Den statistiska signifikanta minskningen av fotgängare i trappan kan ha sin förklaring i de stora antalet deltagare i studien. Slutsats: Det finns många olösta frågor om vad som påverkar människors beteende i deras dagliga liv. Antalet faktorer är större än den här studien har testat. Andra interventioner i form av annat motiv eller arkitekturell utformning kan ge andra resultat. / Background: Infrastructure and how we choose to build our cities control the population's patterns of activity. Infrastructure and technology have evolved into society and provided alternative approaches to get up and down between different floors. More people choose the escalators and the elevator before the stairs and miss out on the positive effects that are connected to everyday stairwells. Purpose: The purpose of the study was to investigate whether it could affect people's behavior to take the stairs instead of the escalator, by changing the environment with a stairway painting. Method: The study was a prospective, quasi-experimental, descriptive intervention study with a consecutive selection. The people who passed the stairs / escalators for a predetermined period of time were studied. The measurements were made using a traffic measurement system (OTUS3D) and lasted for three weeks. First, a baseline was measured during week one, painting the staircase during week two, and measurement for the intervention week three. Summary of results: This study showed no improvement in behavioral change in pedestrians. The statistically significant decrease of pedestrians in the stairs can be explained by the large number of participants in the study. Conclusion: There are many unresolved questions about what affects people's behavior in their daily lives. The number of factors is greater than this study has tested. Other interventions in the form of another motive or architectural design may produce other results.