Vitor Manuel Filipe

Abstract
The recovery of walking function following spinal cord injury (SCI) is of major importance to patients and clinicians. In experimental SCI studies, a rat model is widely used to assess walking function, following thoracic spinal cord lesion. In an effort to provide a resource which investigators can refer to when seeking the most appropriate functional assay, the authors have compiled and categorized the behavioral assessments used to measure the deficits and recovery of the gait in thoracic SCI rats. These categories include kinematic and kinetic measurements. Within this categorization, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each type of measurement. The present review includes the type of outcome data that they produce, the technical difficulty and the time required to potentially train the animals to perform them, and the need for expensive or highly specialized equipment. The use of multiple kinematic and kinetic parameters is recommended to identify subtle deficits and processes involved in the compensatory mechanisms of walking function after experimental thoracic SCI in rats. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

Abstract
The overall objective of this work is to review the assistive technologies that have been proposed by researchers in recent years to address the limitations in user mobility posed by visual impairment. This work presents an “umbrella review.” Visually impaired people often want more than just information about their location and often need to relate their current location to the features existing in the surrounding environment. Extensive research has been dedicated into building assistive systems. Assistive systems for human navigation, in general, aim to allow their users to safely and efficiently navigate in unfamiliar environments by dynamically planning the path based on the user’s location, respecting the constraints posed by their special needs. Modern mobile assistive technologies are becoming more discrete and include a wide range of mobile computerized devices, including ubiquitous technologies such as mobile phones. Technology can be used to determine the user’s location, his relation to the surroundings (context), generate navigation instructions and deliver all this information to the blind user. © 2017 Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany

Abstract
In the later stages of the aging process, an elderly person might need the help of a family member or a caregiver. Technology can be used to help to take care of elderly persons. Autonomous systems, using special interfaces, can collect information from elderly people, which might be useful to predict and recognize health related problems or physical security problems in real time. The emerging technology of image processing, in particular, the emotion recognition, can be a good option to use in elderly care support systems. In this article, we implemented a Microsoft Azure – Emotion SDK to recognize emotion of elderly that able to detect faces and recognize emotions in real time and to be used for elderly care support. The analysis is done with an online video stream, which analyzes facial expression, so that in case of a critical emotion, e.g., if an elderly is very sad or crying, it will inform a caregiver or related entity. From the experiment, we concluded that emotion recognition is a reliable technology to be implemented in real time elderly care. © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018.

Abstract
The visually impaired must face several well-known difficulties on their daily life. The use of technology in assistive systems can greatly improve their lives by helping with navigation and orientation, for which several approaches and technologies have been proposed. Lately, it has been introduced powerful online image processing services, based on machine learning and deep learning, promising truly cognitive assessment capacities. Google and Microsoft are two of these main players. In this work we built a device to be used by the blind in order to test the usage of the Google and Microsoft services to assist the blind. The online services were tested by researchers in a laboratory environment and by blind users on a large meeting room, familiar to them. This work reports on our findings regarding the online services effectiveness, the user interface and system latency. © Springer International Publishing AG, part of Springer Nature 2018.

Abstract