Advanced Engineering Forum Vol. 19

Abstract: Due to guaranteed feed-in tariffs under the Renewable Energy Act and the feed-in precedence of renewable power generation plants the operation of biogas plants in Germany is currently plannable and economically advantageous. However, it is foreseeable that without this subvention biogas plants cannot compete with other regenerative plants such as photovoltaic and wind power plants on the open electricity market. Accordingly, it is of great importance for biogas plant operators to identify and occupy suitable niches to make full use of the unique features of their plants. Because of their predictable availability, those plants can particularly benefit of earning opportunities in times of high demand and contribute to grid stabilization. In order to keep the effort for plant operators as low as possible the automation of existing biogas plants can be extended and enabled to communicate with market platforms or control centers of the distribution system operator. Thus biogas plants can contribute to balancing group compensation not only for accounting purposes but factual by appropriate feed-in into the electrical network in consideration of actual demand.

Abstract: The system architecture for self-organizing smart home ecosystems must fulfill the standard requirements of measuring home conditions, processing instrumented data, and monitoring home appliances as well as providing self-configurations mechanisms for the sensors and actors forming the ecosystem. The communication framework should allow devices to discover counterpart devices, discover the services they offers, invoke these services when needed and get notifications about the state changes of their cooperation partners. Our approach takes advantages of the communication framework OPC UA, since it provided a set of prebuild services, which can be adapted to our needs. The following lines describe the OPC UA communication framework first and describe the architecture of our communication model secondly.

Abstract: Smart home automation applications require a dense information network for proper func-tionality. Air-conditioning or filtration systems, for example, must detect airflows caused by openwindows and doors. An unambiguous detection of such airflows can be performed by a distributedsensor network. Current off-the-shelf sensors often lack processing and communication units, resulting in a large design assembly of discrete integrated circuits (ICs) on one printed circuit board (PCB)that requires additional power supply. Distributing such designs within a home without interferingwith the existing surroundings proves to be difficult in terms of acceptance and usability. This paperpresents a solution by offering an integrated design that includes a microelectromechanical system(MEMS) pressure sensor element along with an analog to digital converter (ADC) and a customizableand programmable processing unit. The integration leads to a smaller overall footprint and reducedpower consumption, which positively affects the acceptance rate of distributed smart sensor networksfor home automation. Clear interfaces between the components ensure an extensible and adaptablesystem design suitable for further smart sensor applications, resulting in a smart sensor framework.

Abstract: Supply with daily consumer goods is a time consuming and quite inefficient task. Furthermore, some people may be dependent on caregivers resulting in additional costs. Hence, it offers opportunities for developing e-commerce solutions in order to enable customers to use otherwise wasted time for replenishment of their private food stocks more efficiently. Although, some digital stores for consumer goods have evolved recently, still only a small part of total sales, especially in food retail, is realized online. Due to inappropriate packaging there still are problems with the quality of fresh products. Also, current solutions for depositing parcels if the customer is absent are not suitable for fresh or cooled goods. Therefore, we show state of the art and developments necessary to establish the logistical integration and thereby enabling automated consumer goods supply in smart home environments. As smart appliances are playing an important role for enabling the automation, our focus is set on such hardware. To demonstrate customer acceptance of smart stocks in their private households, market research has been performed on smart refrigerators in place for every conceivable appliance capable of capturing consumer goods. Our results prove that especially younger generations are very interested in and willing to pay for intelligent appliances.

Abstract: The amount of products for smart homes and the heterogeneous standards interconnecting them is overwhelming. Consequently, choosing the most suitable technical solution according to the resident’s lifestyle is often confusing. In this paper, we propose an ontology to support the planning process of a scenario based personalized smart home (SH). The way that heterogeneous SH components, e.g. sensors, devices and appliances, are represented by our ontology is described. The design process based on this concept includes an assignment between user-specific scenarios and possible technical solutions. Finally, we show the scenario-based utilization of our approach.

Abstract: By increasing the share of renewable energy sources, the volatility of available energy is rising. More and more fluctuating power generation by solar power plants and wind turbines has to be integrated into the power grid. Demand side management (DSM) represents one possible solution to achieve this goal by including energy production and energy consumption simultaneously. In this paper, we especially focus on the field of electric energy in smart homes. Considering the implementation of different DSM devices, an ontology-based approach can serve as a conceptual foundation for a necessary knowledge base. We propose an advanced energy ontology for smart homes, integrating important aspects for a successful DSM. We describe how power producers, storages and consumers are represented in our ontology. Finally, we show the scenario-based utilization of our approach.

Abstract: In future applications service robots will operate in complex and unstructured environments. While performing daily tasks such systems will have to recognize many different unknown objects in order to be able to conduct continuative processes. To support enhanced functionalities of a service robot system an image based meta-search engine that is accessible for a machine can be used. In this contribution the realization of an approach to determine reasonable identification results for single and multiple everyday objects by using the Google reverse image search system is described. In order to deliver convenient results for the communication of a robotic system with a human user the generated search results are post-processed and prepared in order to provide reasonable object descriptions. To enable an intuitive application, control a gesture based approach allows potential users to initialize a search procedure by pointing at an object of interest while being observed by a camera system. The performed experiments show a quite reliable detection behavior for a reasonably broad variety of everyday objects.

Abstract: This paper presents the results of an interdisciplinary research project, where an IT-system was designed to strengthen cognitive and motor skills in the home setting. The prototype is based on a reliable offline system for dementia prevention. Its aim is to postpone the transition from home to nursing home, particularly for people living in structurally weak areas.

Abstract: Background: While treatment monitoring of healthcare interventions is mainly conducted at the hospital, most information on a patient’s health status could be obtained from his everyday life activities. Therefore, there is a great interest in methods for long term (home) monitoring applications. However, there is still a lack of quantitative methods allowing everyday life activities monitoring such as gait analysis at home. While video-based systems have been employed given their high accuracy, they remain expensive and obtrusive with the range of motion of a patient limited to the set up measurement volume. Body worn sensors on the other hand present as an excellent opportunity to remotely and unobtrusively monitor gait characteristics not only at home, but during activities of everyday life. Technical limitations as well as changes in the patient’s gait patterns challenge the extraction of specific gait parameters. Methods: We propose a hybrid system comprising of a markerless video-based motion capturing system and a wearable sensor system with foot worn sensors. A study protocol is presented that will be used to validate the systems against each other. Discussion: This study will evaluate whether a markerless motion capturing system is feasible as a complementary tool for everyday gait analysis. Further, we will validate the accuracy of the sensor system using the video-based system as a gold standard. In the future, the combination might allow a recalibration of algorithmic sensor parameters based on deviations from the reference video-based system, and the combination of both modalities may enhance gait analysis in home monitoring.

Abstract: In this paper the NutriScale-Algorithm is described. NutriScale interprets meals and calculates health related scores. It is based on a food pyramid, which was created by the German Nutrition Society according to existing food related and evidence based medical guidelines. Furthermore various food related mobile phone apps and professional desktop applications were analyzed to figure out, what functionality and data sources are appropriate to create such a promising key figure for food selection like NutriScale.