Full download test bank at ebook textbookfull.

com

Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient

Intelligence Personalisation and
User Adapted Services 8th
International Conference UCAmI 2014
Belfast UK December 2 5 2014
CLICK LINK TO DOWLOAD
Proceedings 1st Edition Ramón
https://textbookfull.com/product/ubiquitous-
computing-and-ambient-intelligence-
personalisation-and-user-adapted-
services-8th-international-conference-
ucami-2014-belfast-uk-
december-2-5-2014-proceedings-1st-edition-
ramon-hervas/

textbookfull
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence 11th

International Conference UCAmI 2017 Philadelphia PA USA
November 7 10 2017 Proceedings 1st Edition Sergio F.
Ochoa
https://textbookfull.com/product/ubiquitous-computing-and-
ambient-intelligence-11th-international-conference-
ucami-2017-philadelphia-pa-usa-
november-7-10-2017-proceedings-1st-edition-sergio-f-ochoa/

Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing 13th

International Conference ICAISC 2014 Zakopane Poland
June 1 5 2014 Proceedings Part II 1st Edition Leszek
Rutkowski
https://textbookfull.com/product/artificial-intelligence-and-
soft-computing-13th-international-conference-
icaisc-2014-zakopane-poland-june-1-5-2014-proceedings-part-
ii-1st-edition-leszek-rutkowski/

Security Standardisation Research First International

Conference SSR 2014 London UK December 16 17 2014
Proceedings 1st Edition Liqun Chen

https://textbookfull.com/product/security-standardisation-
research-first-international-conference-ssr-2014-london-uk-
december-16-17-2014-proceedings-1st-edition-liqun-chen/

Combinatorial Optimization and Applications 8th

International Conference COCOA 2014 Wailea Maui HI USA
December 19 21 2014 Proceedings 1st Edition Zhao Zhang

https://textbookfull.com/product/combinatorial-optimization-and-
applications-8th-international-conference-cocoa-2014-wailea-maui-
hi-usa-december-19-21-2014-proceedings-1st-edition-zhao-zhang/
Multi disciplinary Trends in Artificial Intelligence
8th International Workshop MIWAI 2014 Bangalore India
December 8 10 2014 Proceedings 1st Edition M. Narasimha
Murty
https://textbookfull.com/product/multi-disciplinary-trends-in-
artificial-intelligence-8th-international-workshop-
miwai-2014-bangalore-india-december-8-10-2014-proceedings-1st-
edition-m-narasimha-murty/

Artificial Intelligence and Symbolic Computation 12th

International Conference AISC 2014 Seville Spain
December 11 13 2014 Proceedings 1st Edition Gonzalo A.
Aranda-Corral
https://textbookfull.com/product/artificial-intelligence-and-
symbolic-computation-12th-international-conference-
aisc-2014-seville-spain-december-11-13-2014-proceedings-1st-
edition-gonzalo-a-aranda-corral/

Theory and Practice of Natural Computing Third

International Conference TPNC 2014 Granada Spain
December 9 11 2014 Proceedings 1st Edition Adrian-Horia
Dediu
https://textbookfull.com/product/theory-and-practice-of-natural-
computing-third-international-conference-tpnc-2014-granada-spain-
december-9-11-2014-proceedings-1st-edition-adrian-horia-dediu/

Trust and Trustworthy Computing 7th International

Conference TRUST 2014 Heraklion Crete June 30 July 2
2014 Proceedings 1st Edition Thorsten Holz

https://textbookfull.com/product/trust-and-trustworthy-
computing-7th-international-conference-trust-2014-heraklion-
crete-june-30-july-2-2014-proceedings-1st-edition-thorsten-holz/

Ambient Intelligence 4th International Joint Conference

AmI 2013 Dublin Ireland December 3 5 2013 Proceedings
1st Edition Serge Autexier

https://textbookfull.com/product/ambient-intelligence-4th-
international-joint-conference-ami-2013-dublin-ireland-
december-3-5-2013-proceedings-1st-edition-serge-autexier/
 Ramón Hervás
Sungyoung Lee
Chris Nugent
José Bravo (Eds.)

Ubiquitous Computing
and Ambient Intelligence
LNCS 8867

Personalisation
and User Adapted Services
8th International Conference, UCAmI 2014
Belfast, UK, December 2–5, 2014
Proceedings

123
Lecture Notes in Computer Science 8867
Commenced Publication in 1973
Founding and Former Series Editors:
Gerhard Goos, Juris Hartmanis, and Jan van Leeuwen

Editorial Board
David Hutchison
Lancaster University, UK
Takeo Kanade
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Josef Kittler
University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
Jon M. Kleinberg
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Friedemann Mattern
ETH Zurich, Switzerland
John C. Mitchell
Stanford University, CA, USA
Moni Naor
Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel
C. Pandu Rangan
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India
Bernhard Steffen
TU Dortmund University, Germany
Demetri Terzopoulos
University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA
Doug Tygar
University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
Gerhard Weikum
Max Planck Institute for Informatics, Saarbruecken, Germany
Ramón Hervás Sungyoung Lee
Chris Nugent José Bravo (Eds.)

Ubiquitous Computing
andAmbient Intelligence
Personalisation
and User Adapted Services

8th International Conference, UCAmI 2014

Belfast, UK, December 2-5, 2014
Proceedings

13
Volume Editors
Ramón Hervás
Castilla-La Mancha University, Escuela Superior de Informática
Paseo de la Universidad 4, 13071 Ciudad Real, Spain
E-mail: [email protected]

Sungyoung Lee
Kyung Hee University, Department of Computer Engineering
446-701, Seocheon-dong, Giheung-gu, Yongin-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea
E-mail: [email protected]

Chris Nugent
University of Ulster, Computer Science Research Institute
School of Computing and Mathematics, Jordanstown Campus
Shore Road, Newtownabbey BT37 0QB, UK
E-mail: [email protected]

José Bravo
Castilla-La Mancha University, Escuela Superior de Informática
Paseo de la Universidad 4, 13071 Ciudad Real, Spain
E-mail: [email protected]

ISSN 0302-9743 e-ISSN 1611-3349

ISBN 978-3-319-13101-6 e-ISBN 978-3-319-13102-3
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-13102-3
Springer Cham Heidelberg New York Dordrecht London

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014953288

LNCS Sublibrary: SL 3 – Information Systems and Application, incl. Internet/Web

and HCI
© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,
broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information
storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection
with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and
executed on a computer system, for exclusive use by the purchaser of the work. Duplication of this publication
or parts thereof is permitted only under the provisions of the Copyright Law of the Publisher’s location,
in ist current version, and permission for use must always be obtained from Springer. Permissions for use
may be obtained through RightsLink at the Copyright Clearance Center. Violations are liable to prosecution
under the respective Copyright Law.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication,
neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or
omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein.
Typesetting: Camera-ready by author, data conversion by Scientific Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Printed on acid-free paper
Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com)
 Preface

Ambient intelligence promotes environments surrounded by intelligent interfaces

and ubiquitous communication embedded into everyday objects to support hu-
man activities and achieve a better quality of life. Ambient Intelligence (AmI),
since the initial vision of ISTAG in 2002, has been evolving in recent years while
still maintaining a holistic view: AmI focuses on users, beyond the technology.
This year we celebrated a joint event for the 8th International Conference on
Ubiquitous Computing and Ambient Intelligence (UCAmI 2014) and the 6th
International Work-conference on Ambient Assisted Living (IWAAL 2014) in
Belfast, UK. The UCAmI conference, since its inception, has evolved adapting
its topics to consider new trends in AmI in addition to the inclusion of work-
shops targeting the most specific areas. Furthermore, in an effort to increase
the visibility of the contributions of UCAmI, selected papers will be invited for
submission as extended versions in the journals: Sensors, Journal of Medical
Systems, Medical Informatics and Decision Making and the Journal of Cogni-
tive Computation. As such we would like to thank the distinguished editors of
these journals for providing us with these opportunities.
The program of this joint event includes the UCAmI Workshops on Ambient
Intelligence for Urban Areas (AmIUA), Internet of Things Everywhere: Towards
Smart Objects Everywhere (IoTE), End-User Service Provision for Ambient In-
telligence (EUSPAI) and Video Soft Sensing (VSS). This year’s event included
keynotes from internationally recognized researchers in their fields: Dr. Michael
J. McGrath from Intel Labs, Dr. Riitta Hellman from Karde AS, and Prof.
Jesse Hoey from the Computational Health Informatics Laboratory (CHIL). We
would like to thank our distinguish keynote speakers for their participation and
contribution to this joint event.
We received an over whelming response from researchers who submitted
their contributions for consideration to UCAmI 2014, with a 50% increase in
manuscripts submitted compared to last year’s edition of UCAmI (UCAmI
2013). In this eighth edition of UCAmI, we received 70 submissions involving
238 authors from 20 different countries. Following the review process we had
an acceptance rate for long papers of 40%. A total number of 168 reviews were
undertaken by 106 reviewers from 29 countries. We would like to thank all the
authors who submitted their work for consideration and also the reviewers for
providing their detailed and con-structive reviews in a timely manner.
Finally, we would like to express our deepest thanks to our colleagues for
assisting in organizing this event, particularly Professor Chris Nugent from the
VI Preface

University of Ulster and Professor Jose Bravo from Castilla-La Mancha Univer-
sity. We would also like to thank all the Program Committee members for their
time and contributions.

December 2014 Ramón Hervás

Sungyoung Lee
Chris Nugent
José Bravo
 Organization

General Chairs
José Bravo Castilla-La Mancha University, Spain
Chris Nugent University of Ulster, UK

UCAmI PC Chairs
Ramón Hervás Castilla-La Mancha University, Spain
Sungyoung Lee Kyung Hee University, Korea

EUSPAI PC Chairs
Ramón Alcarria Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Augusto Morales Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain
Tomás Robles Valladares Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain

IoT PC Chairs
Antonio Skarmeta University of Murcia, Spain
Antonio J. Jara University of Applied Sciences Western
Switzerland, Switzerland

AmIUA PC Chairs
Nelson Baloian University of Chile, Chile
Hiroaki Ogata Kyushu University, Japan
Benjamin Weyers RWTH Aachen University, Germany

AmIUA PC Chairs
Hui Wang University of Ulster, UK

Publicity Chairs
Vladimir Villarreal Technological University of Panama, Panama
Jesús Fontecha Diezma Castilla-La Mancha University, Spain
VIII Organization

Local Organizing Chair

Ian Cleland University of Ulster, UK

Organizing Committee
Jesús Fontecha, Spain Mark Beattie, UK
Tania Mondéjar, Spain Colin Shewell, UK
Vladimir Villarreal, Panama Joseph Rafferty, UK
Gabriel Urzáiz, Mexico Philip Hartin, UK
Iván González, Spain Andrew Ennis, UK

Web Masters
Kyle Boyd University of Ulster, UK
Mark Beattie University of Ulster, UK

Program Committee
Unai Aguilera Deusto Institute of Technology - DeustoTech,
University of Deusto, Spain
Xavier Alamán Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain
Ramón Pablo Alcarria Garrido Technical University of Madrid, Spain
Jan Alexandersson DFKI GmbH, Germany
Mohamed Bakhouya University of Technology of Belfort
Montbeliard, France
Mert Bal Miami University, USA
Madeline Balaam Newcastle University, UK
Nelson Baloian University of Chile, Chile
Denilson Barbosa University of Alberta, Canada
Jean-Paul Barthes UTC, USA
Hector Bedon Technical University of Madrid, Spain
Paolo Bellavista University of Bologna, Italy
Daniel Biella University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Francisco Javier Blaya
Gonzálvez University of Murcia, Spain
Andrés Lorenzo Bleda Technical Centre of Furniture and Wood
(CETEM), Spain
Stephane Bouchard Université du Québec en Outaouais-UQO,
Canada
Fatima Boujarwah Kuwait University, Kuwait
Robin Braun University of Technology, Sydney
Jose Bravo Castilla La Mancha University, Spain
 Organization IX

Ceren Budak University of California, Santa Barbara -

UCSB, USA
Yang Cai Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Edwin Cedeño Technical University of Madrid, Spain
Sophie Chabridon Institut TELECOM; TELECOM
Management SudParis / CNRS UMR
SAMOVAR, France
Ranveer Chandra Microsoft, USA
Ignacio Chang Technological University of Panama, Panama
Shuwei Chen University of Ulster, UK
Wei Chen Eindhoven University of Technology,
The Netherlands
Marcello Cinque University of Naples Federico II, Italy
Walter Colitti ETRO-COMO, Vrije Universiteit Brussel,
Brussels
Diane Cook Washington State University, USA
Domenico Cotroneo University of Naples Federico II, Italy
Geoff Coulson Lancaster University, UK
Kevin Curran University of Ulster, UK
Carlos Dafonte University of A Coruña, Spain
Vincenzo De Florio University of Antwerp, Belgium
Boris De Ruyter Philips Research, USA
Stefan Decker National University of Ireland, Ireland
Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo University of Geneva, Switzerland
Simon Dobson University of St. Andrews, UK
Charalampos Doukas University of the Aegean, Greece
Ignacio Elicegui University of Cantabria, Spain
Jesus Favela CICESE, Mexico
Mohamed Fayad San Jose State University, USA
Ana Fensel STI Innsbruck, University of Innsbruck, Austria
Carlo Ferrari University of Padova, Italy
Jesus Fontecha Castilla-La Mancha University, Spain
Jonathan Freeman i2 Media Research Ltd., UK
Leo Galway University of Ulster, UK
Borja Gamecho UPV/EHU, Spain
Carlo Giovannella Università degli Studi di Roma La Sapienza,
Italy
Antonietta Grasso Xerox Research Centre Europe, France
Dan Grigoras UCC, USA
Luis Guerrero Universidad de Chile, Chile
Bin Guo Institut Telecom SudParis, France
Chris Guy University of Reading, UK
Antonio Gómez Skarmeta University of Murcia, Spain
X Organization

Maria Haritou Institute of Communication and Computer

Systems - National Technical University
of Athens, Greece
Jan Havlik Czech Technical University in Prague,
Czech Republic
Riitta Hellman Karde AS, Norway
Valeria Herskovic Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile
Ramón Hervás Castilla-La Mancha University, Spain
Jesse Hoey University of Waterloo, Canada
Eva Hornecker University of Strathclyde, UK
Bin Hu Birmingham City University, UK
Robert Istepanian Kingston University, London, UK
Witold Jacak Polytechnic University of Upper Austria,
Austria
Anne James Coventry University, UK
Antonio J. Jara University of Murcia, Spain
Min Jing University of Ulster, UK
Alan Jovic University of Zagreb, Croatia
Wolfgang Kastner Institute of Computer Aided Automation,
Austria
Abdelmajid Khelil Huawei ERC, Germany
Ryzsard Klempous Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland
Srdjan Krco DunavNET, Ireland
Latif Ladid University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Jean-Christophe Lapayre DISC - Université de Franche-Comté, France
Mikel Larrea University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU,
Spain
Sungyoung Lee Kyung Hee University, Korea
Ernst Leiss University of Houston, USA
Lenka Lhotska Czech Technical University in Prague,
Czech Republic
Suzanne Little Dublin City University, Ireland
Jun Liu University of Ulster, UK
Vincenzo Loia Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy
Tun Lu Fudan University, China
Wolfram Luther University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Diego López-De-Ipiña DeustoTech - Deusto Institute of Technology,
University of Deusto, Spain
Ricardo-J. Machado Universidade do Minho, Portugal
Stephen Makonin Simon Fraser University, Canada
Maria Martinez University of A Coruña, Spain
Rene Mayrhofer Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria
Roc Meseguer Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Spain
 Organization XI

Peter Mikulecky University of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic

Vittorio Miori ISTI-CNR, Italy
Augusto Morales Domı́guez Technical University of Madrid, Spain
Ana Moreira Center de informatica e technologies da
informacao, Portugal
Marı́a Victoria Moreno Cano University of Murcia, Spain
Philip Morrow University of Ulster, UK
Francisco Moya Castilla-La Mancha University, Spain
Tatsuo Nakajima Waseda University, Japan
Michele Nati University of Surrey, UK
David H. Nguyen University of California, Irvine, USA
Marcos Nieto Vicomtech-IK4, Spain
Chris Nugent University of Ulster, UK
Sergio Ochoa Universidad de Chile, Chile
Hiroaki Ogata Kyushu University, Japan
George Okeyo University of Agriculture and Technology,
Kenya
Cristiano Paggetti I+ Srl, Italy
Philippe Palanque University of Toulouse, France
Marcello Pelillo University of Venice, Italy
Dennis Pfisterer University of Lübeck, Germany
Thomas Ploetz Newcastle University, UK
Till Plumbaum DAI-Labor, Technische Universität Berlin,
Germany
Jose Antonio Pow-Sang Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Peru
Parisa Rashidi University of Florida, USA
Patrick Reignier ENSIMAG, France
Luis Francisco Revilla University of Texas Austin, USA
Giuseppe Riva Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Italy
Tomás Robles Technical University of Madrid, Spain
Joel Rodrigues Instituto de Telecomunicações, University
of Beira Interior, Portugal
Nirmalya Roy University of Maryland Baltimore County, USA
Jerzy W. Rozenblit University of Arizona, USA
Jonathan Ruiz-De-Garibay DeustoTech - Deusto Institute of Technology,
Spain
Rodrigo Santos Universidad Nacional del Sur - Bahı́a Blanca,
Argentina
Uli Sattler The University of Manchester, UK
Markus Schneider University of Florida, USA
Bryan Scotney University of Ulster, UK
Boon-Chong Seet Auckland University of Technology,
New Zealand
Weiming Shen NRC, Canada
XII Organization

Kenia Sousa USI4BIZ, Luxemburg

Kåre Synnes Luleå University of Technology, Sweden
Chantal Taconet TELECOM Management SudParis, France
Valentina Tamma University of Liverpool, UK
Gabriel Urzaiz Universidad Anahuac Mayab, Mexico
Janet van der Linden Open University, UK
Rob van Kranenburg Sociotal, Belgium
Félix Jesús Villanueva Molina University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain
Natalia Villanueva-Rosales University of Texas at El Paso, USA
Massimo Villari University of Messina, Italy
Vladimir Villarreal Technological University of Panama, Panama
Hui Wang University of Ulster, UK
Nadir Weibel UCSD, USA
Benjamin Weyers RWTH Aachen University VR Group,
Germany
Erik Wilde EMC Corporation, USA
Hen-I Yang Iowa State University, USA
Juan Ye University of St. Andrews, UK
Zhiwen Yu Northwestern Polytechnical University,
P.R. China, China
Jianguo Zhang University of Dundee, UK
Rui Zhang IBM Research - Almaden, USA
Huiyu Zhou Queen’s University, Canada
Jing Zhou Communication University of China, China
Gustavo Zurita University of Chile, Chile

Additional Reviewers
Rachel Gawley, UK Michael Craven, UK
Jonathan Synnott, UK Giuseppe Fico, Spain
Timothy Patterson, UK Giorgio Carpino, Italy
Alberto Calzada, UK Jseús Fontecha, Spain
Ian Cleland, UK Iván González, Spain
Phillip Hartin, UK
 Table of Contents

Key Application Domains for Ambient Intelligence

Implementing a Pedestrian Tracker Using Low-Cost Bluetooth Inertial
Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Alfonso Bahillo, Ander Arambarri, Ignacio Angulo, Enrique Onieva,
Pilar Elejoste, and Asier Perallos

A Combined Approach to the Problem of Opening a Door

with an Assistant Mobile Robot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Javier Moreno, Dani Martı́nez, Marcel Tresanchez, Merce Teixidó,
Jordi Casanovas, and Jordi Palacı́n

Mobile Physical Rehabilitation of Patients through Intelligence

Devices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Vladimir Villarreal, Abel Silvera, and Lilia Muñoz

Using Ambient Intelligence to Improve Public Transport

Accessibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Carmelo R. Garcı́a, Alexis Quesada-Arencibia, Teresa Cristóbal,
Gabino Padrón, Ricardo Pérez, and Francisco Alayón

A Social Robot in a Tourist Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Diego Nieto, Alexis Quesada-Arencibia, Carmelo R. Garcı́a,
and Roberto Moreno-Dı́az

Prediction of Diabetes Mellitus Based on Boosting Ensemble

Modeling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Rahman Ali, Muhammad Hameed Siddiqi, Muhammad Idris,
Byeong Ho Kang, and Sungyoung Lee

A Novel Software Architecture for Multimodal Transport Semantic

Information Provision Adapted to the User Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Asier Moreno, Asier Perallos, Diego López-de-Ipiña,
Enrique Onieva, and Itziar Salaberria

Ambient Gamification of Automobile Driving to Encourage Safety

Behaviors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Marcela D. Rodrı́guez, Jorge E. Ibarra, José Ruben Roa,
Cecilia M. Curlango, Luis Felipe Bedoya, and Héctor Daniel Montes

Towards a Non-intrusive Self-management System for Asthma Control

Using Smartphones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Iván González, Cristian Carretón, Sergio F. Ochoa, and José Bravo
XIV Table of Contents

Human Interaction in Ambient Intelligence (1/3)

Powerchord: Towards Ambient Appliance-Level Electricity Use
Feedback through Real-Time Sonification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Dan Lockton, Flora Bowden, Clare Brass, and Rama Gheerawo

Collaborative E-Learning Framework for Creating Augmented Reality

Mobile Educational Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Javier Barbadillo, Nagore Barrena, Vı́ctor Goñi,
and Jairo R. Sánchez

Mobile Augmented Reality to Support Teachers of Children

with Autism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Lizbeth Escobedo and Monica Tentori

Conquest - Outdoor Based Games Enhanced with Sensors . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68

Mikael Åhlén, Martin Winbjörk, and Simon Hietala

The Brightnest Web-Based Home Automation System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72

Benjamin Planche, Bryan Isaac Malyn, Daniel Buldon Blanco,
and Manuel Cerrillo Bermejo

A Service for Semantic Enrichment of Smartphone Photographs . . . . . . . 76

Andrew Ennis, Chris Nugent, Philip Morrow, Liming Luke Chen,
George Ioannidis, and Alexandru Stan

Notifications for Collaborative Documents Editing:

An Augmented Object Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80
Gustavo López and Luis A. Guerrero

Design and Evaluation of an Ambient Lighting Interface of HRV

Biofeedback System in Home Setting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Bin Yu, Jun Hu, and Loe Feijs

Human Interaction in Ambient Intelligence (2/3)

A Hybrid Evaluation Methodology for Human Activity Recognition
Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92
Gorka Azkune, Aitor Almeida, Diego López-de-Ipiña,
and Liming Luke Chen

Real-Time Monitoring of User Physical Activity and Position

in an Outdoor Public Space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
Leon Foster, Mathieu Gielen, Mark Beattie, and Simon Goodwill

Use of Tangible Interfaces to Support a Literacy System in Children

with Intellectual Disabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Janio Jadán-Guerrero, Gustavo López, and Luis A. Guerrero
 Table of Contents XV

Online Change Detection for Timely Solicitation of User Interaction . . . . 116

Timothy Patterson, Sally McClean, Chris Nugent, Shuai Zhang,
Leo Galway, and Ian Cleland

Virtual Touch Book: A Mixed-Reality Book for Inclusive Education . . . . 124

Juan Mateu, Marı́a José Lasala Bello, and Xavier Alamán

Human Interaction in Ambient Intelligence (3/3)

Gait Recognition in the Classification of Neurodegenerative Diseases . . . 128
Eddy Sánchez-Delacruz, Francisco D. Acosta Escalante,
Miguel A. Wister, José Adán Hernández-Nolasco,
Pablo Pancardo, and Juan José Méndez-Castillo

Adaptive User Interface and User Experience Based Authoring Tool

for Recommendation Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Jamil Hussain, Wajahat Ali Khan, Muhammad Afzal,
Maqbool Hussain, Byeong Ho Kang, and Sungyoung Lee

Snow Surface: A Multi-touch Game Using Microsoft PixelSense . . . . . . . . 143

Johan Forsling, Sofie Nilsson, Simon Ekström, and Per Grundtman

Evaluation of a Context-Aware Application for Mobile Robot Control

Mediated by Physiological Data: The ToBITas Case Study . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Borja Gamecho, José Guerreiro, Ana Priscila Alves,
André Lourenço, Hugo Plácido da Silva, Luis Gardeazabal,
Julio Abascal, and Ana Fred

Media Sharing across Public Display Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155

Rui José, Jorge C.S. Cardoso, and Jason Hong

They Are Looking... Why Not Interacting? Understanding Interaction

around the Public Display of Community Sourced Videos . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163
João Casal and Rui José

Smart Product Management in Retail Environment Based on Dynamic

Pricing and Location Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
Diego Sánchez de Rivera, Carlos López, Ramón Alcarria,
Diego Martı́n, and Tomás Robles

Design and Evaluation of a Smartphone Based Wearable Life-Logging

and Social Interaction System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
William Burns, Chris Nugent, Paul McCullagh, and Huiru Zheng
XVI Table of Contents

ICT Instrumentation and Middleware Support

for Smart Environments and Objects (1/2)
Modular System Development for Flexible Adoption of Ubiquitous
Challenges in Energy Management and Control . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
Daniel Kretz, Tim Neumann, Marek Kretzschmar,
Sebastian Junghans, and Tobias Teich

Evolution of RFID Applications in Construction:

A Literature Review . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Enrique Valero, Antonio Adan, and Carlos Cerrada

Multi-source Context Data Representation and Distribution

in an ICT Tool for Autism Treatment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
Federico Cruciani, Mark P. Donnelly, Leo Galway,
Francesco Foresti, Cristiano Paggetti, and Enrico Vicario

Implementing a Platform Agnostic Architecture to Accommodate

Heterogeneous Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 204
Rachel Gawley, Chris Nugent, and Alberto Calzada

Common Data Model in AmI Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212

David Martı́nez Casas, Sebastián Villarroya Fernández,
Moisés Vilar Vidal, José Manuel Cotos Yáñez,
José Ramón Rı́os Viqueira, and José Ángel Taboada González

Complex Adaptive Socio-Technical Systems Theory View of Ubiquitous

Computing Systems Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
Yongming Wang, Junzhong Gu, and Zili Zhou

Extending Ambient Intelligence to the Internet of Things:

New Challenges for QoC Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
Pierrick Marie, Thierry Desprats, Sophie Chabridon,
and Michelle Sibilla

Linked Spatial Data for Location-Aware Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 232

Aimar Rodrı́guez, Eduardo Castillejo, and Diego López-de-Ipiña

ICT Instrumentation and Middleware Support

for Smart Environments and Objects (2/2)
A Wearable Device-Based Personalized Big Data Analysis Model . . . . . . . 236
Shujaat Hussain, Byeong Ho Kang, and Sungyoung Lee

A Web Based Cardiovascular Disease Detection System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243

Hussam Alshraideh, Mwaffaq Otoom, Aseel Al-Araida,
Haneen Bawaneh, and José Bravo
 Table of Contents XVII

A Sensor-Based Method for Occupational Heat Stress Estimation . . . . . . 251

Pablo Pancardo, Francisco D. Acosta Escalante,
José Adán Hernández-Nolasco, Miguel A. Wister,
and Diego López-de-Ipiña

Self-adaptive Service Deployment in Context-Aware Systems . . . . . . . . . . 259

Gabriel Guerrero-Contreras, José Luis Garrido,
Carlos Rodrı́guez-Domı́nguez, and Sara Balderas-Dı́az

Patient and Medications Tracking by Means of RFID Technology

at the Public Ambulatory Hospital of A Coruña . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 263
Marı́a Martı́nez Perez, Jose Ramon Vizoso Hermida,
Isabel Martı́n Herranz, Guillermo Vázquez Gonzalez,
and Carlos Dafonte Vazquez

Towards a Hand-Based Gestural Language for Smart-Home Control

Using Hand Shapes and Dynamic Hand Movements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 268
Hassan Saidinejad, Fabio Veronese, Sara Comai, and Fabio Salice

Adding Intelligence for Environment Adaptation

Using Wavelet Transform to Disaggregate Electrical Power
Consumption into the Major End-Uses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
Francisco Javier Ferrández-Pastor, Juan Manuel Garcı́a-Chamizo,
Mario Nieto-Hidalgo, Vicente Romacho-Agud,
and Francisco Flórez-Revuelta

A Novel Approach for the Population and Adaptation of Ontology-Based

User Profiles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
Kerry-Louise Skillen, Chris Nugent, Mark P. Donnelly,
Liming Luke Chen, William Burns, and Ivar Solheim

Architecture of a Mobile App Recommender System for People

with Special Needs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 288
Marı́a Isabel Torres-Carazo, Marı́a José Rodrı́guez-Fórtiz,
Marı́a Visitación Hurtado, José Samos, and Vanesa Espı́n

Semantics Based Intelligent Search in Large Digital Repositories Using

Hadoop MapReduce . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 292
Muhammad Idris, Shujaat Hussain, Taqdir Ali, Byeong Ho Kang,
and Sungyoung Lee

MLM-Based Automated Query Generation for CDSS Evidence

Support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 296
Muhammad Afzal, Maqbool Hussain, Taqdir Ali, Wajahat Ali Khan,
Sungyoung Lee, and Byeong Ho Kang
XVIII Table of Contents

Mobility Pattern Based Misbehavior Detection to Avoid Collision

in Vehicular Adhoc Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300
Mohammad Abdur Razzaque, Fuad A. Ghaleb, and Anazida Zainal

Towards a CVL Process to Develop Agents for the IoT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 304

Inmaculada Ayala, Mercedes Amor, and Lidia Fuentes

Using the Spatial RIMER+ Approach to Estimate Negative Self-rated

Health and Its Causes across Northern Ireland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 312
Alberto Calzada, Jun Liu, Chris Nugent, Hui Wang,
and Luis Martinez

A Leader Election Service for Crash-Recovery and Omission

Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
Christian Fernández-Campusano, Roberto Cortiñas,
and Mikel Larrea

Decision Making Environment Based on Prosumer Services for Tracing

Drugs in a Hospital Pharmacy Department . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
Diego Martı́n, Ramón Alcarria, Álvaro Sánchez-Picot,
and Tomás Robles

Security and Privacy Issues in AAL

Visual Privacy by Context: A Level-Based Visualisation Scheme . . . . . . . 333
José Ramón Padilla-López, Alexandros Andre Chaaraoui,
and Francisco Flórez-Revuelta

Evaluation of “Fair Trade” Metaphor as a Control Privacy Method

for Pervasive Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
Esquivel Salas Abraham, Pablo Alfonso Haya, and Xavier Alamán

RecordMe: A Smartphone Application for Experimental Collections

of Large Amount of Data Respecting Volunteer’s Privacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
David Blachon, François Portet, Laurent Besacier,
and Stéphan Tassart

Workshop on Ambient Intelligence for Urban Areas

(AmIUA)
Distributed Power Management System with Dynamic Load
Management Based on Multi-agent System for Smart Grid . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
Rafael Jesús Valdivieso-Sarabia, Francisco Javier Ferrández-Pastor,
Juan Manuel Garcı́a-Chamizo, and Mario Nieto-Hidalgo
 Table of Contents XIX

Towards an Evaluation of a Metadata Standard for Generative Virtual

Museums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Daniel Sacher, Benjamin Weyers, Daniel Biella,
and Wolfram Luther

SmartCity: Public Transportation Network Planning Based on Cloud

Services, Crowd Sourcing and Spatial Decision Support Theory . . . . . . . . 365
Jonathan Frez, Nelson Baloian, and Gusravo Zurita

User Interface Design for Test and Diagnosis Software in Automotive

Production Environments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 372
Nikolaj Borisov, Annette Kluge, Wolfram Luther,
and Benjamin Weyers

The Role of Assistive Technologies for Older Adults in Urban Areas . . . . 376
Anna Kötteritzsch and Benjamin Weyers

Smart Museums – Exploiting Generative Virtual Museums . . . . . . . . . . . . 384

Daniel Sacher, Benjamin Weyers, Daniel Biella,
and Wolfram Luther

Monitoring Physical Activities Using Smartphones . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388

Pablo Romo, Sergio F. Ochoa, Nelson Baloian, Ignacio Casas,
and José Bravo

Workshop on IoT Everywhere:

Towards Smart Objects Everywhere (IoT)
Co-creation as the Key to a Public, Thriving, Inclusive and Meaningful
EU IoT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396
Rob van Kranenburg, Nathalie Stembert, M. Victoria Moreno,
Antonio F. Skarmeta, Carmen López, Ignacio Elicegui,
and Luis Sánchez

An Inertial-Based Person Tracking and Vital Data Acquiring for

Low-Cost Patient Monitoring Systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 404
Thitipun Chobtrong, Markus Haid, Mustafa Kamil,
and Ersan Guenes

Privacy-Preserving Security Framework for a Social-Aware Internet

of Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 408
Jorge Bernal Bernabe, Jose Luis Hernández, M. Victoria Moreno,
and Antonio F. Skarmeta Gomez

Big Data and IoT for Chronic Patients Monitoring . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 416

Diego Gachet Páez, Fernando Aparicio, Manuel de Buenaga,
and Juan R. Ascanio
XX Table of Contents

Geographic Service Discovery for the Internet of Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 424

Martin Bauer and Salvatore Longo

Towards Scalable DNS-Based Service Discovery for the Internet

of Things . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 432
Badis Djamaa and Mark Richardson

Unified Platform for M2M Telco Providers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 436

Mário Antunes, João Paulo Barraca, Diogo Gomes,
Paulo Oliveira, and Rui L. Aguiar

ARIIMA: A Real IoT Implementation of a Machine-Learning

Architecture for Reducing Energy Consumption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 444
Daniela Ventura, Diego Casado-Mansilla, Juan López-de-Armentia,
Pablo Garaizar, Diego López-de-Ipiña, and Vincenzo Catania

Workshop on End-User Service Provision

for Ambient Intelligence (EUSPAI)
Ambient Intelligence Services Personalization via Social Choice
Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 452
Emilio Serrano, Pablo Moncada, Mercedes Garijo,
and Carlos A. Iglesias

Creating and Validating Emergency Management Services by Social

Simulation and Semantic Web Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
Geovanny Poveda, Emilio Serrano, and Mercedes Garijo

Smart Dynamic Pricing Based on ECA Rules and Electronic Ink

Labeling for Retail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 468
Diego Sánchez de Rivera, Álvaro Sánchez-Picot, Ramón Alcarria,
Diego Martı́n de Andrés, and Tomás Robles

Personalisation of Intelligent Homecare Services Adapted to Children

with Motor Impairments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476
Miguel Ángel Valero, Maria Lindén, Juan Ramón Velasco,
and Mats Björkman

End-User Service Distribution for Efficient Inter-Domain Execution . . . . 480

Ramón Alcarria, Diego Martı́n, Tomás Robles,
and Álvaro Sánchez-Picot

A Four-Leaf Clover Shape Methodology for Prosumer Service

Developments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 488
Diego Martı́n, Ramón Alcarria, Álvaro Sánchez-Picot,
Tomás Robles, and Diego Sánchez de Rivera
 Table of Contents XXI

Services Collaboration Supported by a B2B Platform in Retail

Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496
Álvaro Sánchez-Picot, Tomás Robles, Ramón Alcarria,
and Diego Martı́n

Workshop on Video Soft Sensing (VSS)

Feature Based Similarity Measure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
Shreeya Sengupta, Hui Wang, William Blackburn, and Piyush Ojha

Mining Multiple Discriminative Patterns in Software Behavior

Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 511
Hao Du, Chunping Li, and Hui Wang

Person Detection, Tracking and Masking for Automated Annotation of

Large CCTV Datasets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 519
Marcos Nieto, Peter Leškovský, and Juan Diego Ortega

Recognition by Enhanced Bag of Words Model via Topographic ICA . . . 523

Min Jing, Hui Wang, Kathy Clawson, Sonya Coleman,
Shuwei Chen, Jun Liu, and Bryan Scotney

A General Weighted Multi-scale Method for Improving LBP for Face

Recognition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
Xin Wei, Hui Wang, Gongde Guo, and Huan Wan

Soft Sensing as Class-Imbalance Binary Classification –

A Lattice Machine Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 540
Huan Wan, Hui Wang, Gongde Guo, and Song Lin

Author Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549

 Implementing a Pedestrian Tracker
Using Low-Cost Bluetooth Inertial Sensors

Alfonso Bahillo, Ander Arambarri, Ignacio Angulo, Enrique Onieva, Pilar Elejoste,
and Asier Perallos

Deusto Institute of Technology (DeustoTech), University of Deusto, Bilbao, 48007, Spain

             
 

Abstract. Foot-mounted inertial measurement units (IMUs) are becoming the

basis for many pedestrian positioning systems as a component of accurate indoor
navigation. However, most of solutions that implement low-cost IMUs are often
connected to a laptop by a wired connection which interferes with the pedestrian
movements. Moreover, nobody walks carrying a laptop but a smartphone. Smart-
phones are attractive platforms for researchers to collect data coming from several
sensors due to their small size, low-cost, and the fact that they are already carried
routinely by most people. Therefore, this paper (i) describes a custom-built foot-
mounted pedestrian indoor localization system based on commercially available
low-cost inertial sensors connected wirelessly (via Bluetooth) to a smartphone,
and (ii) demonstrates the capability of smartphones to be used as the target of a
wirelessly IMU-based positioning system where raw IMU data will be processed
in real time. We have tested the pedestrian tracker with commercial devices in a
five floor building with reasonable results (accumulated error lower than 1%).

1 Introduction
The use of location data to control normal day features are being more popular in re-
cent years not only for security applications, but also for mass market applications.
Applications of location data include Location-Based Services (LBS) such as pedes-
trian navigation in complex indoor buildings, inclusion of elders or disabled citizens
in Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) scenarios, support to first-aid responders such as
firemen or policemen in risky situations, the proactive supply of information at specific
locations for museum visitors, or the customized advertising in shopping malls, among
others [1]. Outdoors, most of the positioning applications rely on global navigation
satellite systems (GNSS). However, satellite signals get severely degraded in indoor
environments such as inside buildings, urban canyons or tunnels. For these indoor en-
vironments, many local positioning systems (LPS) have been developed during the past
two decades based on different technologies, and utilizing many physical signals (see
[2] for a LPS survey). After all this research effort, it is becoming a fact that none of
these technologies clearly outperforms the others. Thus, a current trend in addressing
indoor localization is to fuse already deployed technologies.
An increasing popular indoor positioning solution combines pedestrian dead-
reckoning (PDR), using foot-mounted inertial measurement units (IMUs), with already

R. Hervás et al. (Eds.): UCAmI 2014, LNCS 8867, pp. 1–8, 2014.
c Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014
2 A. Bahillo et al.

deployed beacon-based technologies to provide indoor and accurate long-time naviga-

tion [3, 4, 5]. Indeed, PDR is the basis for many indoor localization techniques (see [6]
for a tutorial on PDR). Despite the increasing popularity of methods which use PDR
techniques based on foot-mounted IMUs, most of them connect the IMU to a laptop
by a wired connection (usually by USB) which interferes with the human movements.
The existing commercial IMUs with wireless connectivity would solve that problem,
but they are relatively high cost (e.g. MTw from Xsens Technologies). Other solutions
lose the sense of mobility because of the sensors signals are proceessed on a laptop.
Nevertheless, nobody walks with a laptop but with a tablet or smartphone.
Therefore, the contribution of this work is twofold: (i) making the connectivity to the
IMU wireless and of lower-cost by developing a custom-built foot-mounted pedestrian
indoor localization system based on commercially available low-cost inertial sensors
connected via Bluetooth to a smartphone (or tablet), and (ii) processing the IMU signals
in the smartphone (or tablet) at real time by developing a LPS framework on Android
operating platform. Thus, you can easily, and at low cost, implement our Bluetooth
foot-mounted IMU and apply the already developed techniques with minimum custom
configuration.
The paper is structured as follows: Section 2 describes the low-cost IMU with Blue-
tooth connectivity implemented in this work. Section 3 gives a brief overview on inertial
pedestrian dead-reckoning and describes the PDR method to be developed on Android
and which performance will be evaluated. Section 4 shows our experimental setup and
empirical positioning results. Section 5 gives some final conclusions.

2 Low-Cost Bluetooth Inertial Sensors

The low-cost IMU conected via Bluetooth to a smartphone discussed in this paper
consists of three modules - an IMU with three sensors, a Bluetooth modem, and a
lithium polymer (LiPo) battery - to wirelessly give the smartphone the data gathered
by the IMU. In this work we have used the modules provided by SparkFun Electron-
ics. As IMU we used the 9DOF Razor IMU which consists of a MEMS triple-axis ac-
celerometer (ADXL345), a triple-axis gyro (ITG-3200), and a triple-axis magnetometer
(HMC5883L) to give us nine degrees of inertial measurements [7, 8, 9]. As Bluetooth
modem we used the BlueSMiRF Gold which works wirelessly as a serial (RX/TX)
pipe. Both IMU and Bluetooth modem are powered by the very slim and extremely
light weight 850 mAh LiPo battery.
To set up the hardware, we follow the online tutorial describing how to build an atti-
tude and heading reference system (AHRS) using the SparkFun 9DOF Razor IMU [10].
Basically, connecting the 9DOF Razor IMU to the BlueSMiRF Gold modem attending
their I/O header layouts. The LiPo battery powers the 9DOF Razor IMU thorough an
USB charger also used to charge the battery. After assembling the three modules we
designed an enclosure with a 3D printer in order to mount them easier on the foot. Fig-
ure 1(a) shows the whole system. The modules are mounted one on the top of the other
minimizing the space that they take up. The velcro straps are used to fix the IMU to
the foot as it is shown in Figure 1(b). Therefore, with no more than 175$ (taken current
SparkFun Electronics prices) you can implement a low-cost Bluetooth foot-mounted
IMU for pedestrian tracking.
 Implementing a Pedestrian Tracker Using Low-Cost Bluetooth Inertial Sensors 3

LiPo USB Charger

9DOF Razor IMU
BlueSMiRF Gold Enclosure
LiPo battery

Velcro straps

(a) Low-cost Bluetooth IMU (b) Foot-mounted IMU

Fig. 1. Pedestrian tracker. (a) Low-cost Bluetooth IMU into the enclosure, and (b) attached to the
right foot.

The parametrization of the IMU is application dependent. As a result, no universal

parameters can be given. However, some groups of parameters can still be identified
[11]. The parameters of the hardware set-up are only the sensor placement/mounting
and the sampling frequency. On the one hand, a rule of thumb is that for inertial naviga-
tion systems (INS) employing low-cost sensors, the position error is proportional to the
cube of the operational time which means that free-inertial navigation is only feasible
for a few seconds [12]. Therefore, we place the IMU on the foot for using the well-
known zero velocity update (ZUPT) method and thus bounding the error growth. On
the other hand, after an experimental analysis of human motion sampling, E. Munoz et
al. noted that the limiting signals in terms of bandwidth are those from the accelerometer
due to the high frequencies generated when the foot hits the floor [13]. They established
that the sampling frequency should lie between 200 Hz - when using flat shoes - and
300 Hz - when high heels. In this work we used flat shoes therefore, we set the ac-
celerometer data rate to 200 Hz. For the gyro the bandwidth needed is not greater than
50 Hz, therefore the sampling frequency would be 100 Hz [13].
The external parameters are the trajectory and the sensors output. Regarding the sen-
sors output W.T. Faulkner et al. found that altitude errors in pedestrian-tracking systems
are due to the accelerations of the foot exceeding the dynamic range of the accelerome-
ter [14]. They noted that accelerations can reach ±10g when walking, and ±13g when
running. Therefore, for the best results the accelerometer is configured in a 13-bit reso-
lution (4mg/LSB) to reach a range up to ±13g. Likewise, the gyro is configured with a
full-scale range of ±2000/s corresponding to a sensitivity of 0.0695/s per LSB. Due to
we focus on indoor environments in this work, the magnetometer sensor is not used due
to the indoor magnetic disturbances. Thus, the raw data to be sent wirelessly consists
of 12 bytes, 6 for the accelerometer (2 by axis) at 200 Hz data rate, and 6 for the gyro
(2 by axis) at 100 Hz data rate. The raw outputs of sensors are collected by the 9DOF
Razor IMU on-board ATmega328 microcontroller and output over the serial interface
to the Bluetooth modem.
4 A. Bahillo et al.

3 Inertial Pedestrian Dead-Reckoning

Dead reckoning is the process of estimating an object’s position by tracking its move-
ments relative to a known starting point and attitude. There are two alternative PDR
integration methods: those that estimate position by integrating step lengths (SL) and
orientation estimations at each detected step [15, 16]. And, those with a foot-mounted
IMU, implementing an INS on a Kalman filter [17, 18, 19, 6]. Both SL and INS-KF
share the same main drawback, the drift, the accumulation of positioning errors dur-
ing the dead-reckoning integration. Without resetting the drift, the velocity (position
estimation) error would increase linearly (quadratically) with time. However, we can
remove the velocity error applying the well-known ZUPT method which detects the
stance phase - that is, when the IMU is stationary - and thus we can reset the estimated
velocity to zero and adjust the estimated position [17]. Detecting when an IMU is sta-
tionary can be challenging, this has made foot-mounted IMU’s our choice for PDR.
Furthermore, INS-KF method performs better than SL since velocity and position er-
rors are correlated, and the cross-covariances let the KF correct the position (and not
only the velocity) during a ZUPT.
The article published in 2005 by E. Foxlin is probably the most cited work in this
area [17]. He explains how to take advantage of correlated position/velocity errors in
KF to also remove most position errors with each ZUPT. A. Jimenez et al. gives a
more complete description of the implementation process, and a more recently work by
C. Fischer et al. outlines a tutorial for implementing a reasonably accurate tracker using
a foot-mounted IMU with minimum custom configuration [19] and [6], respectively.
In this paper, we take the raw data collected by the smartphone through its Bluetooth
interface and transform them into successive positions and orientations. For this trans-
formation we implement an INS-KF method taking the standard inertial PDR method
described in [6] with some variations explained below:
– System initialization: While the user’s foot remains motionless on the floor (pre-
vious to start walking), the acceleration and rate-of-turn signals are recorded. On
the one hand, the acceleration data is used to estimate the roll and pitch angles
(the yaw is provided by the user) which give us the initial rotation matrix. This ini-
tial matrix is refined a posteriori with successive acceleration measurements on an
extended Kalman filter while the foot remains motionless. On the other hand, the
mean of gyro data is computed as the bias to be subtracted from successive gyro
measurements.
– Detect a stationary phase: Instead of only using a simple threshold on the magni-
tude of the gyro rate-of-turn measurements, we implement a triple-condition algo-
rithm which not only takes into account the magnitude of the gyro measurements
but also the magnitude of the acceleration and its local variance [19].
– Detect if going up/down: Similarly to ZUPT method, we can remove the position
error in altitude on the Kalman filter while the IMU remains at the same floor.
Detecting if the IMU is going up/down can be accomplished by a two-condition
algorithm which takes into account the local variance of the estimated position in
altitude and its magnitude change within the last period of time (e.g. one second).
– Heading drift reduction: Heading drift still remains despite using ZUPT since the
heading error is unobservable. However, the majority of buildings have dominant
 Implementing a Pedestrian Tracker Using Low-Cost Bluetooth Inertial Sensors 5

directions defined by the orientation of their corridors and, a person walks most of
the time along straight-line paths parallel to these dominant directions. Therefore,
assuming the person walks in indoor buildings we can implement the so-called
heuristic drif elimination (HDE) proposed by Borenstein and Ojeda or a more re-
cently work by A. Jimenez et al. improving the previous one (iHDE) [20] and [21],
respectively.

4 Evaluation

The pedestrian tracker using low-cost Bluetooth inertial sensors has been developed
on Android, a mobile operating platform which nowadays controls most of the smart-
phones. As a way to verify its behaviour under a real environment it has been tested
using a commercial smartphone which processes the raw IMU data in real time.

4.1 Experimental Setup

For the experimental evaluation we conducted real trials at the building of the Faculty
of Engineering (Deusto University) in the city of Bilbao, whose floor map is shown in
Figure 2. This five floor building is approximately 112 m long and 62 m wide. The ap-
proximately 800 m long path followed goes by three floors, starting in the 5th floor (at
16 m height), going down to the 3rd floor (at 8 m height) by the stairs, once more going
down to the 2nd floor (at 4 m height), and finally returning to the starting point going
up to the 5th floor. In the experiments the target is a person who walks more or less at
constant speed, and carries the foot-mounted IMU detailed in section 2 and the Galaxy
Nexus GT-i9250 smartphone. This smartphone incorporates the Broadcom BCM4330
single chip device providing with Bluetooth 4.0+HS connectivity among others hand-
held wireless systems, and a 1.5 GHz dual core ARM-based processor which imple-
ments the pedestrian tracker algorithm in real time.

4.2 Results

We do not aim to give a precise comparison of different PDR heuristics with their
optimal parameters. Rather, we want to evaluate the performance of a custom-built foot-
mounted pedestrian tracker based on commercially available low-cost inertial sensors
connected via Bluetooth to a smartphone which processed the raw IMU data in real
time. All position estimates are relative to the initial position and heading, therefore a
small error early in the path would have a significant effect later on.
Figure 2 shows the horizontal and altitude plots from our three implementations:
ZUPT heuristic, ZUPT and going up/down heuristics, and ZUPT, going up/down and
iHDE heuristics. All of them share the same framework, the standard inertial PDR
method described in [6], using the initial transformation matrix provided by the gath-
ered initial accelerometers data, and removing the gyro bias computed at the beginning
of the trial. Acceleration and gyro data rate at 200 Hz and 100 Hz, respectively, gave the
best results. Lower data rates degraded the performance, but higher rates did not bring
6 A. Bahillo et al.

26

24

70 22
Start
60 End
20
50

z (m)
18
40
y (m)

30 16

20
14
10
12
0

10 10

20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
x (m) Distance travelled (m)

(a) KF ZUPT
18

16

70 14
Start
60 End
12
50
z (m)

10
40
y (m)

30 8

20
6
10
4
0

10 2

20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
x (m) Distance travelled (m)

(b) KF ZUPT and going up/down

18

16

70 14
Start
60 End
12
50
z (m)

10
40
y (m)

30 8

20
6
10
4
0

10 2

20 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900
x (m) Distance travelled (m)

(c) KF ZUPT, going up/down and iHDE

Fig. 2. Plots for a 800 m long walk through the Faculty of Engineering at the University of
Deusto. Each pair of plots shows the horizontal position (left) and altitude (right) for (a) KF
with ZUPT heuristic, (b) KF with ZUPT and going up/down heuristics, and (c) KF with ZUPT,
going up/down and iHDE heuristics.
 Implementing a Pedestrian Tracker Using Low-Cost Bluetooth Inertial Sensors 7

any noticeable improvement. The KF implementation with heading drift and altitude
error elimination always provide the best results. As a way to compute the accuracy of
the pedestrian tracker, the route started and finished at the same point. Therefore, the
accumulated positioning error is computed as the 3D Euclidean distance between the
starting and finishing positions with respect to the total traveled distance. Thus, apply-
ing iHDE and going up/down heuristics, the total accumulated error is 2 m, i.e. 0.25%
of the total traveled distance. The results were reasonable (accumulated error lower than
1%) but would improve by testing different environments with different users, which
probably need better tuning the KF and the parameters of the implemented heuristics.

5 Conclusions
The discussion in this paper has given an overview of the possibilities of smartphones
to be used as the target of a wirelessly IMU-based positioning system. Firstly, we have
described a custom-built foot-mounted IMU based on commercially available low-cost
inertial sensors to be connected wirelessly to a smartphone. Secondly, we have demon-
strated the capability of smartphones to process raw IMU data in real time which are
received wirelessly up to 200 Hz data rate. Finally, we have tested the pedestrian tracker
with commercial devices in a five floor building achieving an accumulated error lower
than 1%. As future work we are going to fuse the raw IMU data with the smartphone
sensors data such as WiFi and GPS trying to provide accurate and long-time navigation.

References
[1] Harle, R.: A survey of indoor inertial positioning systems for pedestrians. IEEE Communi-
cations Surveys and Tutorials 15, 1281–1293 (2013)
[2] Gu, Y., Lo, A., Niemegeers, I.: A survey of indoor positioning systems for wireless personal
networks. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials 11, 13–32 (2009)
[3] Zampella, F., Bahillo, A., Prieto, J., Jimenez, A.R., Seco, F.: Pedestrian navigation fusing
inertial and rss/tof measurements with adaptive movement/measurement models: Experi-
mental evaluation and theoretical limits. Sensors and Actuators A: Physical 203, 249–260
(2013)
[4] Zhang, K., Zhu, M., Retscher, G., Wu, F., Cartwright, W.: Three-dimension indoor position-
ing algorithms using an integrated rfid/ins system in multi-storey buildings. In: Gartner, G.,
Rehrl, K. (eds.) Location Based Services and TeleCartography II - From Sensor Fusion to
Context Models. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography, pp. 373–386. Springer,
Heidelberg (2008)
[5] Ruiz, A.R.J., Granja, F.S., Honorato, J.C.P., Rosas, J.I.G.: Accurate pedestrian indoor nav-
igation by tightly coupling foot-mounted imu and rfid measurements. IEEE T. Instrumen-
tation and Measurement 61, 178–189 (2012)
[6] Fischer, C., Sukumar, P.T., Hazas, M.: Tutorial: Implementing a pedestrian tracker using
inertial sensors. IEEE Pervasive Computing 12, 17–27 (2013)
[7] Analog Devices: Digital Accelerometer. ADXL345 Datasheet, pp. 1–40 (2013)
[8] InvenSense Inc.: Digital Gyroscope. ITG-3200 Product Specification, pp. 1–40 (2010)
[9] Honeywell International Inc.: Digital Compass. HMC5883L Datasheet, pp. 1–20 (2010)
[10] GitHub: Tutorial: Building an AHRS using the SparkFun “9DOF Razor IMU” or “9DOF
Sensor Stick”. HMC5883L Datasheet (accessed May 2014)
8 A. Bahillo et al.

[11] Nilsson, J.O., Skog, I., Handel, P.: Performance characterisation of foot-mounted zupt-
aided inss and other related systems. In: International Conference on Indoor Positioning
and Indoor Navigation (IPIN), pp. 1–7. IEEE (2010)
[12] El-Sheimy, N., Niu, X.: The Promise of MEMS to the Navigation Community. Inside
GNSS, 6+ (2007)
[13] Munoz, D., Heirich, O., Khinder, M., Robertson, P.: Optimal sampling frequency and bias
error modeling for foot-mounted IMUs. In: International Conference on Indoor Positioning
and Indoor Navigation (IPIN), pp. 1–9. IEEE (2013)
[14] Faulkner, W., Alwood, R., Taylor, D., Bohlin, J.: Altitude accuracy while tracking pedes-
trians using a boot-mounted IMU. In: Position Location and Navigation Symposium
(PLANS), pp. 90–96. IEEE (2010)
[15] Ladetto, Q., Seeters, J., Sokolowski, S., Sagan, Z., Merminod, B.: Digital Magnetic Com-
pass and Gyroscope for Dismounted Soldier Position and Navigation. Sensors and Elec-
tronics Technology Panel, NATO Research and Technology Agency Sensors, pp. 1–15
(2002)
[16] Stirling, R.: Development of a Pedestrian Navigation System Using Shoe Mounted Sensors.
University of Alberta, Department of Mechanical Engineering (2004)
[17] Foxlin, E.: Pedestrian tracking with shoe-mounted inertial sensors. IEEE Comput. Graph.
Appl. 25, 38–46 (2005)
[18] Feliz, R., Zalama, E., Garcia-Bermejo, G., Bohlin, J.: Pedestrian Tracking Using Inertial
Sensors. Journal Physical Agents 3, 35–43 (2009)
[19] Jimenez, A.R., Granja, F.S., Prieto, J.C., Rosas, J.I.G.: Indoor pedestrian navigation using
an ins/ekf framework for yaw drift reduction and a foot-mounted imu. In: Workshop on
Positioning, Navigation and Communication, pp. 135–143. IEEE (2010)
[20] Borenstein, J., Ojeda, L.: Heuristic drift elimination for personnel tracking systems. Journal
of Navigation 63, 591–606 (2010)
[21] Jimenez, A., Seco, F., Zampella, F., Prieto, J., Guevara, J.: Improved Heuristic Drift Elimi-
nation (iHDE) for pedestrian navigation in complex buildings. In: International Conference
on Indoor Positioning and Indoor Navigation (IPIN), pp. 1–8. IEEE (2011)
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 THE LOTTERY OF DEATH.
AN EPISODE IN GUERRILLA WARFARE.
While on a trip to Europe last summer, I noticed in the smoking-
room of the good steamer Servia a rather portly, middle-aged
gentleman, with a mild expression of countenance, and certainly no
trace of the soldier in his bearing; and yet he was the hero of a
thrilling adventure. I was introduced to him by one of the officers of
the steamer, and found him to be an insurance agent in a large way,
going abroad for needed rest—Mr Balcom by name. In the course of
a conversation on personal courage, one evening, over our after-
dinner cigars, my new-found friend related the following interesting
adventure:

You know, in the late war between the North and South, nearly all
our able-bodied men on both sides of the line were more or less
soldiers of some sort. I was myself a Captain and ‘Commissary of
Subsistence’ in the United States Volunteers, and was attached to a
cavalry brigade in the army of the Potomac. In the Fall of 1864, my
brigade was located in camp for the winter about four or five miles to
the south of Winchester, Virginia. As a ‘commissary,’ I had constantly
to pass with my train of wagons from the town to camp; but so
confident was I that no danger could possibly befall me on that short
jaunt, actually all within our own lines, that I carried neither sword nor
pistol. Well, one pleasant afternoon in the latter part of November, as
I was riding with my orderly, a good soldier, by the name of Leonard,
at the head of the wagon-train, wearying of the slow progress made
by the mule-teams, I placed the train in charge of the commissary
sergeant, and rode on ahead, followed by my orderly only. I had
gone little more than half-way to camp—the road we followed
became wooded by young timber and underbrush—when, as I
turned a bend in the road, I saw four or five mounted men about a
quarter of a mile in advance of us. Calling my orderly to my side, I
asked him what he thought of them.
‘I guess they are some of our boys, sir. They have our uniform on,
and are too far inside of our lines to be “Johnnies”’ (a term applied to
the Southerners).
This was my own idea; but still, I seemed intuitively to feel that all
was not right. These men evidently saw or heard us, for, turning their
horses’ heads toward camp, they marched slowly onward. This at
once disarmed me of all doubt, for I knew camp was near, and if they
were not ‘all right,’ they would hardly venture that way; so I resumed
my canter, and soon overtook my fellow-travellers. When I
approached, they filed to each side of the road, as if to let me pass,
and I kept on. But no sooner was my orderly and myself past their
last file of men, than in an instant we found ourselves confronted by
half-a-dozen pistols and the sharp command, ‘Halt!’ (A sixth man
had come out of the bush.)
‘Now, you Yanks want to keep your mouths shut, and do as you are
told, or it will be all up with you,’ said the commander. ‘Forward—trot
—march!’ and away we swept at a swinging trot, Leonard and I
completely surrounded by this unwelcome bodyguard, and well
covered by their pistols.
About a thousand yards we trotted on, and then swept into a narrow
road, more bridle-path than road, along which we kept for a mile or
so, when the command ‘Halt!’ was again given. Leonard and I were
ordered to dismount and give up our arms. I had none; but my
orderly was soon deprived of his. We were again put upon our
horses and strapped to the saddles in not too gentle a manner. I
ventured to ask where we were going to and who my captors were;
and was told we were being taken to Mosby’s camp by some of his
men; and furthermore, I was ordered to keep absolute silence on
pain of death. From this I inferred that we had to pass very near
some portion of our own camp or pickets, and for a moment I hoped
some chance might yet arise for escape. But during the march we
saw no soldier, or even camp-fire, and this road seemed specially
devised to allow free passage from the front to the rear of our lines
by any person who knew it. In about an hour or so we came once
more upon the highway. Night had fallen, but a young moon partially
illuminated the road.
The commander, a lieutenant of these free riders, reined his horse to
my side, and said we had passed the Yankee lines, and I could now
speak if I chose. I merely said the straps hurt me which bound me to
the saddle. We halted, and Leonard and I were untied, with a caution
that any attempt to escape would only end in our death. Two of the
guerrillas still led our horses, and the commander gave the order to
gallop. We moved rapidly, until about eight p.m. For some time we
had been ascending, and then slackening our pace a little. Suddenly,
before and below us, upon a plain of no great extent, I saw a camp
of from five to six hundred men. ‘Here we are,’ said the lieutenant;
and in a very short time Leonard and I found ourselves under strong
guard in the headquarters of Colonel Mosby at Rectortown. Under
the same guard were some score more of ‘Yankee’ prisoners.
Supper being over, we were given a little cold ‘hoe’-cake and the run
of a pail of water for our share.
I found that some of these my fellow-prisoners were infantry-men;
and one lad of about fourteen was a drummer of infantry. The
majority, however, were cavalry-men caught wandering too far from
their commands. Apparently, I was the only commissioned officer;
but as I wore a private’s overcoat, my rank was not known to my
fellow-prisoners for some time.
The sentinels about us paced their beats; some of the men were
asleep, and I was sitting on a log smoking, when, by the dim light of
the fire, I saw a mounted figure approach. The figure halted at the
guard; and presently the sergeant in charge called out: ‘Fall in—fall
in, you Yankees. Hurry up. Get into line there.’ Finally, all being
awake and placed to suit him, he turned, and saluting the horseman,
said: ‘The prisoners are paraded, sir.’
‘How many have you?’ asked the rider.—‘Twenty-two in all, sir.’ And
then I felt we were in the presence of that terror of the valley, Colonel
John S. Mosby, the best provost-marshal Sheridan had in the
Shenandoah.
As Mosby advanced nearer to the camp-fire, I was struck with the
lack of daring in his face and manner; but I knew he had it, from his
past career. His manner was not ferocious or tyrannical, and he
quietly turned upon us his eye, which seemed to see the whole of us
at a glance. He spoke as follows: ‘Men, your commander has seen fit
to refuse all quarter to my soldiers when captured, and hangs or
shoots them on the spot. I do not approve of this kind of warfare; but
I must retaliate; and as I capture two of your army to every one you
get of my command, that is not difficult. Just now, the balance is
against you, and five of you twenty-two prisoners must die.’
You may imagine all were wide awake at this announcement.
‘It is not for me to order out any five of you to execution, so the
fairest way will be for you to draw for your lives.’ Turning to the
sergeant, he continued: ‘Get twenty-two pieces of paper prepared—
five numbered from one to five. Let the other seventeen be blank,
and have each man draw a ticket; and you supervise the drawing.’
The sergeant hastened away for the paper and a lantern. Hitherto, I
had said nothing to any one of my rank; but now, throwing aside my
overcoat, I stepped forward, and addressing the mounted officer,
asked him if he was Colonel Mosby. The reply came: ‘That is my
name, sir.’
I was boiling over with indignation at this bloody action of the
guerrilla, and I said: ‘I am an officer and a gentleman; these men are
regularly enlisted soldiers of the United States army; surely you are
not going to treat them as spies or dogs, because they have fallen
into your hands through the fortune of war. What you propose, sir, is
not justice; it is assassination.’
I shall never forget the look on Mosby’s face as he turned toward
me, and said: ‘What justice would I get if I fell into the hands of your
soldiers? I tell you, sir, I value the life of the poorest of my comrades
far more than that of twenty Yankees. But I shall only retaliate in kind
—man for man, and that I will have. I was not aware, sir, that you
were an officer; but surely you can ask no better treatment from me
than I give your men?’
I said I wanted nothing more than he would grant to all, and stepped
back into my place in the ranks.
The sergeant returned just then, and the awful ‘Lottery of Death,’ as I
have ever since called it, began. When my turn came, I drew from
the hat a piece of paper; but I could not look at it—my heart stood
still, my knees trembled, my hand faltered; but suddenly, as from a
horrible dream, I was awakened by the word ‘Blank!—Fall back, sir.’
I was not to die by rope or bullet, at anyrate for a time. I cannot
describe to you my terror, my abject fear; nor do I know how I
appeared to others; but I do know I shall never suffer the fear of
death again so keenly.
The drawing was completed; the five victims separated from us;
when, suddenly, a boy’s voice was heard piteously asking for
pardon, mercy, anything but death. Colonel Mosby looked toward the
little drummer-boy, for he it was, and said: ‘Sergeant, is that boy one
of the condemned?’
‘Yes, colonel,’ replied the sergeant.
‘Send him back in the ranks again; he is too young to die yet.’—And,
‘Captain,’ turning to me, ‘since you are so much afraid to die, we will
give you another chance.—Sergeant, place two papers—one
numbered, the other blank—in your hat, and let the captain and the
man next him draw again.’
At this second drawing, although I had only one chance in two of
escaping, I did not feel that abject fear that first overcame me, and I
stepped forward when ordered and drew another blank piece of
paper. My feeling was one of intense pity for the poor fellow who
drew the fatal number, and I hardly heard Mosby say: ‘Well, you are
a lucky fellow, captain.’
We were removed from the condemned that night. After two or three
days, with the aid of some friendly negroes and some burnt cork, I
made my escape, reaching our own lines in nine days.
Of the five condemned, two escaped, one by feigning death after
being shot, and the other was rescued by a friendly negro before
death ensued. These two men reached our army later on, and
corroborated my strange story of the ‘Lottery of Death.’ I think you
will agree with me that I had cause for showing fear at least once in
my life.
 ABOUT WEEDS.
Somebody once characterised ‘dirt’ as matter in a wrong place.
Now, a weed is a plant in the wrong place. It has a place in the
economy of nature, no doubt, unprofitable or even noxious as it may
appear to the farmer or gardener. It must not be forgotten, moreover,
that even the humblest weed is worthy of patient examination, and is
a marvel of physiological structure. Then, again, some of our
hedgerow wildings vie in beauty of form and elegance of habit with
the cherished garden plants. What have we more charming, for
instance, than traveller’s joy (Clematis vitalba), bryony, dogrose, or
the large white bindweed? And as to some other weeds, which of our
garden plants figure so largely in pictures as the foxglove, purple
loosestrife (Lithrum salicaria), the teasel, or the dock? Nevertheless,
they are weeds, and as such, are entirely out of place on the garden
or farm. Robbers and usurpers are they, to be ignominiously
decapitated or uprooted, and consigned to the rubbish-heap or the
flames.
Nature, it must be remembered, never sleeps; she either rewards the
hand of the diligent with abundant harvests, or she scatters
broadcast her thorns and thistles, as a punishment for man’s
neglect. The seeds of many species of plants have wonderful vitality.
We are not about to quote the ‘mummy wheat’ as an example; but
well-authenticated instances are recorded of seeds that have
preserved their vitality for upwards of half a century. The seeds of
the charlock and others of the Cruciferous tribe are of an oily nature,
and therefore capable of withstanding the effects of moisture, and
will germinate after being buried for years. But the process of ‘soiling’
the banks of new railways affords evidence of the long-continued
vitality of seeds. The surface soil which has been laid aside in heaps
for the purpose, is thrown back and spread upon the banks; and
among the multitude of grasses and weeds which spring up and form
a dense emerald carpet, there are invariably species seldom if ever
found in the immediate neighbourhood. In the case of forest fires in
the Far West, almost an entire new vegetation succeeds.
Occasionally, the extensive moorlands in the neighbourhood of
Liphook, Hants, take fire, and burn for days. The heather is dotted
over with seedlings of Scotch fir, which is indigenous in the locality.
Many of these trees are consumed with the heather, and with them
some inches in depth of the dried surface. Seeds from the fir-cones,
dropped years ago, are partially relieved from the superincumbent
pressure, germinate, and in a few years supply the places of those
that are destroyed. But every summer breeze wafts the winged
seeds of the thistle, dandelion, the coltsfoot, groundsel, and many
others, far and wide. Borne aloft on their tiny parachutes, they sail
along until a summer shower bears them down to a moist, warm,
resting-place in the field or wild.
The great weed-army which infests farms and gardens in the British
Islands numbers about one hundred and thirty species, and consists
mainly of two great classes, namely, annuals (fruitful only once) and
perennials (capable of producing flowers and fruit time after time).
About a dozen, however, are biennials; four of these are thistles; and
the most familiar of the remainder are the foxglove and the hemlock.
Some of the most troublesome farm and garden pests are
perennials, and among these, the most mischievous in their rapidity
of growth and tenacity of life are the greater and lesser bindweeds
(Convolvulacea) and the couch-grass (Triticum repens). Unless the
soil be well dug and pulverised and thoroughly sifted, the attempt to
eradicate either of these will be useless; every half-inch of the white
crinkled roots of the bindweed or bit of couch-grass to which roots
are attached will grow. The greater bindweed, perhaps, is the most
difficult to get rid of, and is especially troublesome among
evergreens. The tender, semi-transparent shoots stand quite erect
under evergreens until they touch the lower branches; they then
make rapid growth, and quickly cover the whole head of a laurel,
bay, laurustinus, or rhododendron with a thick mantle of light-green
leaves, twisted stems, and snow-white trumpet-shaped flowers.
Beautiful in its way, no doubt; but what of the handsome shrubs it
has stifled in its fatal caresses, and what of the weeks of hard labour
that must be expended in the attempt to eradicate the pest?
In Italy, however, the white, underground stems of couch-grass are
carefully gathered by the peasantry, taken to market in bundles, and
sold as food for cattle and horses. They contain a considerable
amount of starch. A variety of couch called matt grass is extensively
used in Holland for binding together the sandy dunes and flats by the
sea. Coltsfoot is a very troublesome weed; a variegated form of it,
with handsome, bold, cream-edged leaf, is wonderfully persistent in
forcing its way to other feeding-grounds. In one case under our own
observation, its roots, which are tender and brittle, found their way
from a bed, beneath a four feet margin of turf and an eight feet wide
gravel path. The only place where one is not likely to find the root is
where it was planted! In the case of the weeds hitherto
particularised, it is useless to remove the part appearing above
ground; and it is also so with several of the thistles; unless cut
beneath the crown or collar, the result is simply to force the plant to
make a fresh effort by throwing out numerous side-shoots.
A year or two ago, we were reminded by the Prime Minister, in one
of his thoughtful and suggestive speeches at Hawarden, that ‘one
year’s seeding is seven years’ weeding.’ One can appreciate the
repetition of the adage when reflecting on the enormous increase of
the common groundsel, or the still more extraordinary multiplication
of the common poppy. All the year round, even when the
temperature is below the freezing-point, the small yellow blossoms of
the groundsel may be noticed, each with its bundle of winged seeds,
while round the parent plant are a host of young seedlings. But such
is the prodigious fertility of the common poppy, that a single plant will
during its year of life produce forty thousand seeds! a rate of
increase that would, it is computed, in the course of seven years
cover the area of Great Britain; and furnish, we may further reckon,
enough opium to lull the whole population into a last long sleep. The
small seed escapes when ripe through the apertures at the base of
the capsule.
Next to the poppy and groundsel we may place the charlock,
chickweed, and corn marigold, all annuals, and to be easily got rid of
before flowering by hoeing. Some years ago, I was told by an
intelligent head-gardener in the island of Colonsay, in the west of
Scotland, that seeds of the oxeye daisy arrived in some packages
from London. In the course of a few years, oxeye had taken entire
possession of the island. It is a perennial, and also seeds plentifully,
and is therefore more difficult to destroy. Both the latter and the
yellow corn marigold (Chrysanthemum segetum) are now affected by
the æsthetic world, and are assuming importance as articles of
commerce, thousands of bunches being disposed of on market-days
at Covent Garden.
Americans inform us that about two hundred and twenty species of
weeds have been imported into their country, mostly from the British
Islands. In 1837, there were said to be only one hundred and thirty-
seven. The common plantain is known among the Indians as the
‘Englishman’s foot,’ as though following the steps of the white
settlers. The common yellow toadflax was, it is said, introduced by a
Mr Ranstead as a garden flower, and is now known as the Ranstead
weed. In 1788 it had overrun the pastures in the inhabited parts of
Pennsylvania, and was the cause of bitter complaints. Chickweed is
said to have been introduced as bird-seed, and the Scotch thistle
arrived in a bedtick filled with thistle-down. Feathers being cheap,
the bed of down was replaced by feathers, and the former thrown by
the wayside. The seed soon found a congenial home. There is a
troublesome American water-weed, however (Anacharis
alsinastrum), which has avenged our transatlantic cousins threefold
by choking our ponds, rivers, and canals. Another little intruder from
the Cape (Azolla pinnata) may be troublesome. It is a charming little
aquatic, and most interesting under the microscope. Some one had
thrown a handful of it on a pond we wot of, where the common
duckweed (Lemna) flourished; but azolla quickly monopolised the
whole surface and crowded out the duckweed.
With regard to weeds generally, it must always be borne in mind by
the farmer and gardener that they not only deprive the growing crops
of the food intended for them only, but their presence robs the young
plant of the air, light, moisture, and heat essential for its healthy
development. It is quite possible, however, that some of the plants
we now condemn as weeds will some day be utilised as green crops
and ploughed in. The entire constituents of the crop are in such case
returned to the soil. It is unnecessary to allude here to another
aspect of the weed question further than to remark, that a garden
owes much of its charm and neatness to its order, cleanliness, and
entire absence of weeds.
 TECHNICAL EDUCATION AT
GORDON’S COLLEGE, ABERDEEN.
A little over two years ago (March 22, 1884), under the title of ‘A
Practical Science and Art School,’ we gave an account of the
transformation that had taken place at Gordon’s College, Aberdeen,
the old ‘hospital’ having been converted into a day and evening
school, both possessing sections specially devoted to technical
instruction. The first independent examination of the College (day-
school) has just been made, the examiners being Professor Birrell of
St Andrews, and Professor Kennedy of University College, London,
who report highly on the appearance made and the work done by the
pupils, and on the general condition of the College. They mention
that the College has so prospered under its new constitution, that
whereas the pupils in attendance previous to 1881 at no time
exceeded two hundred, the number on the register for this session
(1885-86) exceeds eight hundred. Of these, one hundred and twenty
are foundationers, who are entitled to free education, books, and an
allowance of £15, 12s. per annum for maintenance and clothing, &c.;
and this is all that remains of the ‘hospital’ system. We excerpt the
portion of the Report bearing on ‘Handicraft,’ as being of general
interest:
‘A certain number of the most promising boys in the third division are
allowed to receive workshop instruction for from one and a half to
two hours a week; while in the fourth and fifth divisions of the
Commercial School it forms a regular subject of instruction, to which
about four hours a week are allotted. Some boys have only one year
of this work, some (occasionally) over two years. A year and a half
seems to be about the average. The work done by individual pupils
depends upon their ability and probable future employment, each
having free choice so far as it is practicable. All boys occupy
themselves with simple woodwork for about a year after entering.
Later on, they obtain practice in fitter’s work (filing, chipping,
scraping, &c.), and in work at simple machine tools (simple and
screw-cutting lathes and planing-machines), also in forging and
greensand moulding. Those who require it are also taught something
of tinplate and plumber’s work. From twenty to twenty-five lads work
in the workshop at one time—there is not room for more. At present,
about eighty lads in all are receiving practical instruction in four
detachments. Earlier in the session (a large number of the more
advanced boys having left for situations in the early spring), the total
number was about one hundred and twenty-five, receiving instruction
in five divisions.
‘For the purposes of inspection, we requested that boys at all the
different stages might be put in the workshop simultaneously, in
order that both elementary and advanced work might be examined.
The younger boys were making wooden joints, half-lap, scarf,
dovetail, &c.; and from this, various grades of work were represented
up to the different parts of a slide-rest lathe which was in process of
construction. There seemed no tendency to take the work as play; it
was carried on as seriously and in the same spirit as every other part
of the educational course. The results were correspondingly
satisfactory. It is not intended or supposed that work of this kind will
supersede the necessity of apprenticeship in practical work; but it is
believed that it will send the boys to their apprenticeship much better
prepared than they would otherwise be to take advantage of the
opportunities they then have of learning, and much more likely to be
soon useful to their employers. Carried on in the spirit in which the
workshop at Gordon’s College is carried on, these results are
certainly achieved, and can only be spoken of in terms of thorough
commendation. The work turned out by the boys was not, of course,
equal to that of journeymen; but judged from its own point of view, as
the work of boys having had at most very little training, it was as
satisfactory in execution as in intention.’
It may not be out of place to mention that Mr F. Grant Ogilvie, the
Science teacher at Gordon’s College, has recently been appointed
Principal of the Heriot-Watt College, Edinburgh; while Mr T. A. Clark,
Superintendent of the workshop at Gordon’s College, has been
appointed to the corresponding post at Heriot’s Hospital School.
 AN EXPERIMENT IN CO-OPERATIVE FARMING.
We learn from a contemporary that the experiment in co-operative
farming now being made by the Duke of Portland on his Gringley
estate is exciting considerable attention in the country amongst all
classes. The farm referred to, consisting of about four hundred and
eighty-five acres, has been let, together with all the stock, horses,
and implements upon it, and with all the rights of the tenant, to an
association of six agricultural labourers. It is chiefly arable, there
being only thirty-six acres of grass; and the soil is a deep peat,
growing good wheat, and also oats, but not barley. The terms upon
which the farm is let or leased are, it is said, a fixed rent, payable
half-yearly. The tenant-right has been valued by parties mutually
chosen, and three per cent. is to be charged on the amount, to be
paid half-yearly with the rent. The horses, stock, and implements left
upon the farm have also been valued by the same valuers, and three
per cent. is to be charged thereon. The tenant-right, the stock, and
implements are at all times to be kept up after a style of good
husbandry, and the landlord, his agent, or servants are to have every
facility shown them to ascertain that the capital is being in no way
deteriorated. The shooting is not let with the farm. The agreement is
the one usually in force on the Duke’s estate, but it has been found
necessary, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, to enter
into a subsidiary agreement giving power to resume possession at
any time, and this document will necessarily come under the Bills of
Sale Act. The amount of the valuation is said to be £2431, 10s. The
farm buildings are in good order, and sufficient for the requirements
of the farm. The live-stock on the farm has been valued, as also the
farming implements and general stock, including sufficient seed-
corn. There are four houses on the farm; but in order to meet the
requirements of the six men and their families, two of the houses
have been divided, and other alterations may also be made. A deed
of partnership is being drawn up amongst the men, which shall be in
force for seven years. Each man is to receive a wage of four pounds
a month; accounts are to be balanced yearly; and after the rent,
interest, and all other charges are deducted, the remainder is to be
paid over towards reducing the amount of the valuation.

THE CONSUMPTION OF TEA.

The Australian colonies and New Zealand, according to one of the
Indian journals, drink far more tea per head of population than the
British Islands. The Australians come first, with 7.66 pounds per
head; the New Zealanders next, with 7.23 pounds per head; while
the people of Great Britain, though appearing third in the list,
consume only 4.90 pounds each. Newfoundland and Canada come
next; while in the United States the consumption is only 1.30 pound
per head; and in Russia, which is always regarded as a great tea-
drinking country, the consumption is only 0.61 pound per head.
Belgium, Sweden, Austria-Hungary, and Spain consume less than
the other European nations; but there is not one nation on the
continent, with the exception of Holland, in which the annual
consumption exceeds one pound per head. But in certain parts of
the countries named, tea-drinking is much more common than in
others. In certain Russian districts, especially, tea is drunk constantly
and copiously, and it is this fact which has given rise to the notion
that Russia is the most bibulous of all tea-drinking countries.
 TO A CHERRY BLOSSOM.

O cherry blossom! have you loved?

I have loved.
A maiden sweet as summer skies,
With tender lights in hazel eyes,
I have loved.

O cherry blossom! you are fair.

She was fair.
Her thoughts were whiter than your face;
She wore no proud pretending grace,
All so fair.

O cherry blossom! can you weep?

I can weep.
Her frail white form is buried now,
And over it the lilies blow—
Blow, and weep.

O cherry blossom! you will die.

All things die.
The sweetest things that we receive,
Ah, these of us take soonest leave—
You will die.

W. D. F.

Printed and Published by W. & R. Chambers, 47 Paternoster Row,

London, and 339 High Street, Edinburgh.
All Rights Reserved.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CHAMBERS'S
JOURNAL OF POPULAR LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART,
FIFTH SERIES, NO. 134, VOL. III, JULY 24, 1886 ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions

will be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S.

copyright law means that no one owns a United States copyright
in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and
distribute it in the United States without permission and without
paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General
Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and
distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the
PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if
you charge for an eBook, except by following the terms of the
trademark license, including paying royalties for use of the
Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is
very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such
as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. Project Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and
printed and given away—you may do practically ANYTHING in
the United States with eBooks not protected by U.S. copyright
law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially
commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE