António Ribeiro Sousa

Abstract

Abstract

Abstract
Animal experiments have gained importance in human diseases studies, namely neurological diseases and its biomechanical and physiological aspects. As a model of human disease, the rat offers many advantages over other organisms. For the biomechanical aspects of locomotion these studies are based on the analysis of animals' kinetic parameters, accessed through a locomotion measurement system. However, these systems are not yet thoroughly developed, are still scarce and are also very expensive when developed for studies using small rodents. In this paper, a system capable of measuring contact forces of small rodents is presented. The platform hardware is based on a 5 x 3 matrix of ultra-sensitive force sensors that produce a set of signals acquired in a LabVIEW (TM) environment, used for data acquisition and processing. The post processing steps include the removal of null data, curve normalization related to the rat's weight and expressed as percentage of passage, resulting in a gait pattern. The proposed cost-effective system has achieved excellent results regarding the locomotion profile of healthy animals.

Abstract

Abstract
This paper describes the development of a mobile indoor navigation system, supported by a GIS and built using only open source tools. For the sake of simplicity a single building was chosen for the tests converting the floors to digital information from paper plans. The rooms geometry was saved on a proper database with all the adjacent information associated, which can in turn be provided to the clients application by APIs and Web Services. The system is able to calculate the most adequate path between any of the rooms taking into account the user profile which is defined by it's degree of mobility (eg. wheelchair). By reading a QR code placed in key places inside the building the user can obtain, on a mobile phone, his current position and receive orientations to any room that he might want to go. The directions hints are complemented with the presentation of real pictures associated to key locations in the path to validate that the correct path is taken by the user. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.