Mobile crowdsensing (MCS) is a well-established paradigm that leverages mobile devices' ubiquitous nature and processing capabilities for large-scale data collection to monitor phenomena of common ...interest. Crowd-powered data collection is significantly faster and more cost-effective than traditional methods. However, it poses challenges in assessing the accuracy and extracting information from large volumes of user-generated data. SmartRoadSense (SRS) is an MCS technology that utilises sensors embedded in mobile phones to monitor the quality of road surfaces by computing a crowdsensed road roughness index (referred to as <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">P_{PE} </tex-math></inline-formula>). The present work performs statistical modelling of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">P_{PE} </tex-math></inline-formula> to analyse its distribution across the road network and elucidate how it can be efficiently analysed and interpreted. Joint statistical analysis of open datasets is then carried out to investigate the effect of both internal and external road features on <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">P_{PE} </tex-math></inline-formula>. Several road properties affecting <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">P_{PE} </tex-math></inline-formula> as predicted are identified, providing evidence that SRS can be effectively applied to assess road quality conditions. Finally, the effect of road category and the speed limit on the mean and standard deviation of <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">P_{PE} </tex-math></inline-formula> is evaluated, incorporating previous results on the relationship between vehicle speed and <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">P_{PE} </tex-math></inline-formula>. These results enable more effective and confident use of the SRS platform and its data to help inform road construction and renovation decisions, especially where a lack of resources limits the use of conventional approaches. The work also exemplifies how crowdsensing technologies can benefit from open data integration and highlights the importance of making coherent, comprehensive, and well-structured open datasets available to the public.
This paper examines the opportunities and the economic benefits of exploiting publicly-sourced datasets of road surface quality. Crowdsourcing and crowdsensing initiatives channel the participation ...of engaged citizens into communities that contribute towards a shared goal. In providing people with the tools needed to positively impact society, crowd-based initiatives can be seen as purposeful drivers of social innovation from the bottom. Mobile crowdsensing (MCS), in particular, takes advantage of the ubiquitous nature of mobile devices with on-board sensors to allow large-scale inexpensive data collection campaigns. This paper illustrates MCS in the context of road surface quality monitoring, presenting results from several pilots adopting a public crowdsensing mobile application for systematic data collection. Evaluation of collected information, its quality, and its relevance to road sustainability and maintenance are discussed, in comparison to authoritative data from a variety of other sources.
Readily available and affordable consumer-grade electronics, with ever-increasing sensing, computing, and communication capabilities, have provided the ground for distributed computation and data ...collection systems. Crowd-sensing applications rely on volunteers providing access to their personal devices-a category encompassing smartphones, wearables, vehicles, and a wide range of `Internet of Things' appliances-and using them as sensors. These systems rely on the willingness of participants to invest in a common cause, which often entails explicit efforts from users, occupation of hardware resources, and risks of sharing private data. Incentives and rewarding schemes are adopted to encourage user participation. This paper introduces the "Worth One Minute" (WOM) platform: an implementation of a general-purpose rewarding system based on anonymous vouchers. The platform is designed to reward user efforts towards the common good, rewarding their contributions and the intrinsic social value they provide, while preserving their anonymity.
During the height of the CoViD-19 pandemic in 2020 and early 2021, schools throughout Europe have been closed for several months, leaving teachers with the responsibility of providing distance ...learning through video conferencing and remote-presence systems, while parents were scrambling for appropriate tools and support. School outings have also suffered from the limited mobility of students given by stay-at-home orders and other restrictions. In this paper we present a set of technologies developed to reproduce the school trip experience, allowing students to stay at home or in school and requiring only a Web browser and Internet access, while integrating communication tools that allow participants to actively be engaged in interactive lessons and educational experiences. In 2020 the tool has been used during the "CodyTrip" event, a two-day visit to the town of Urbino, attended by more than 15.000 students, followed up with a series of events in 2021 with over 115.000 participants. Results from the pilot events show very high engagement and demonstrate the feasibility of organizing online visiting experiences with massive participation without compromising the perceived interactivity of the proposed activities, which can be equally engaging for different audience demographics. Findings also suggest that this solution may be adopted not only as a contingent substitute for traveling during the pandemic, but as an effective tool to widen the scope and appeal of cultural tourism.
Assessment of balance by means of posturographic analysis is frequently used in the clinical practice for evaluating the risk of falls or as an indicator of balance-related disorders. The development ...of automatic, affordable and accurate systems for gauging balance capabilities in the elderly is deemed a crucial step towards the adoption of prevention strategies and the reduction of associated social costs, especially in a context of growing average age of population. In this article we propose to exploit signals that can be collected from sensors on board of common consumer-grade smartphones for posturographic analysis. To this aim, we introduce several processing algorithms for extracting useful information from the acceleration data streams, and we also present an assessment framework based on the comparison of the trajectory of the body center of gravity, estimated from embedded triaxial accelerometers, with a homologous counterpart, estimated from the reference plate force, thus adding to the consistency of the whole process. Experimental results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed system in terms of its capability of achieving signals and posturographic features which agree with those obtained by means of balance board platforms, potentially opening the way to novel research studies and applications of mobile technology in this field.
The COVID-19 crisis represents the most dangerous threat to public health since the H1N1 influenza pandemic of 1918. So far, the disease due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been countered with extreme ...measures at national level that attempt to suppress epidemic growth. However, these approaches require quick adoption and enforcement in order to effectively curb virus spread, and may cause unprecedented socio-economic impact. A viable alternative to mass surveillance and rule enforcement is harnessing collective intelligence by means of citizen empowerment. Mobile applications running on personal devices could significantly support this kind of approach by exploiting context/location awareness and data collection capabilities. In particular, technology-assisted location and contact tracing, if broadly adopted, may help limit the spread of infectious diseases by raising end-user awareness and enabling the adoption of selective quarantine measures. In this paper, we outline general requirements and design principles of personal applications for epidemic containment running on common smartphones, and we present a tool, called 'diAry' or 'digital Ariadne', based on voluntary location and Bluetooth tracking on personal devices, supporting a distributed query system that enables fully anonymous, privacy-preserving contact tracing. We look forward to comments, feedback, and further discussion regarding contact tracing solutions for pandemic containment.
LLM-based Solutions for Healthcare Chatbots: a Comparative Analysis Montagna, Sara; Aguzzi, Gianluca; Ferretti, Stefano ...
2024 IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications Workshops and other Affiliated Events (PerCom Workshops),
2024-March-11
Conference Proceeding
This paper discusses the challenges of using Large Language Models (LLMs) in medical chatbots for chronic disease self-management. Accordingly, we define an architecture specifically devised to deal ...with issues related to reliability, clinical trials, and privacy. Two solutions are compared to prevent data disclosure: a filtering mechanism for sensitive data with an external LLM, and a locally deployed LLM using open-source models. Experimental results underscore the challenges in effectively instructing the local LLM so as to provide performances comparable to GPT-3.5.
Chronic patient self-management is crucial for maintaining physical and psychological health, reducing pressure on healthcare systems, and promoting patient empowerment. Digital technologies, ...particularly chatbots, have emerged as powerful tools for supporting patients in managing their chronic conditions. Large language models (LLMs), such as GPT-4, have shown potential in improving chatbot-based systems in healthcare. However, their adoption in clinical practice faces challenges, including reliability, the need for clinical trials, and privacy concerns. This paper proposes a general architecture for developing an LLM-based chatbot system that supports chronic patients while addressing privacy and security concerns. The architecture is designed to be independent of specific technologies and health conditions, focusing on data protection legislation compliance. A prototype of the system has been developed for hypertension management, demonstrating its potential for motivating patients to monitor their blood pressure and adhere to prescriptions.
The rapid spread of the CoViD-19 pandemic in early 2020 and the adoption of social distancing and "stay-at-home" orders gave rise to the sudden need for schools to be able to provide effective remote ...teaching. In Italy and elsewhere, the introduction of distance learning technologies has significantly impacted the education of students and limited their social interaction and activities, among which are school trips and other scholastic experiences. To support the constrained educational possibilities of Italian schools, we developed "ActiveViewer", a technological platform that enables massive and interactive remote events, and performed a year-long large-scale experiment, providing a series of massive remote school trips to several Italian cities. We designed a new school trip format, named "CodyTrip" that merges coding and computational thinking with elements of traditional school outings, and provides an engaging experience for participants. In this paper, we present the format and five online trips performed during the school year 2020/2021. The results based on user feedback support the adoption of the tool not only as a stopgap measure for school outings throughout the pandemic but as an accessible and inclusive tool to widen the possibilities of cultural tourism.
Computational thinking and coding-based problem solving are increasingly seen as crucial cross-disciplinary skills and an important part of a well-rounded education. Coding games and problem solving ...exercises have been growing in popularity. Many large-scale initiatives have been launched in order to bring these initiatives into classrooms, from preschool to secondary education. CodyColor is a simplified coding game, which takes basic programming instructions representing movements ("turn left" and "turn right") and represents them with color blocks. In contrast to most other coding games, color-coded programming relies on no symbolic interpretation on part of the player in order to be approachable by very young players as well. We present a massively multiplayer online version of CodyColor, discuss design and implementation specifics, and enumerate some of the possible game modes.
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