resumo "substrato para a fabricacao de piso sensivel e metodo de deteccao e exibicao continua de carga sobre o substrato", por tratar a presente invencao de um substrato (1; 50) para a fabricacao de um piso sensivel compreendendo uma primeira estrutura produzida de meios de deteccao de alta condutividade (2a – 2d) e tendo uma primeira orientacao; uma segunda estrutura produzida de meios de deteccao de alta condutividade (3a – 3d) que e adaptada para ser depositada sobre a mencionada primeira estrutura e que apresenta uma segunda orientacao, outra do que a mencionada primeira orientacao, a mencionada segunda estrutura (3a – 3d) formando uma camada de suporte para produtos de acabamento para pisos; um elemento (4) fabricado de um material condutivo compreendendo uma espessura elasticamente compressivel (s1), duas faces opostas (104, 204) contatando as mencionadas duas primeira e segunda estruturas (2a – 2d), (3a – 3d), e um resistor eletrico cuja resistencia e proporcional a mencionada espessura (s1). 1/1

Smart environments are now designed as natural interfaces to capture and understand human behavior without a need for explicit human-computer interaction. In this article, we present a general-purpose architecture that acquires and understands human behaviors through a sensing floor. The pressure field generated by moving people is captured and analyzed. Specific actions and events are then detected by a low-level processing engine and sent to high-level interfaces providing different functions. The proposed architecture and sensors are modular, general-purpose, cheap, and suitable for both small-and large-area coverage. Some sample entertainment and virtual reality applications that we developed to test the platform are presented.

Surveillance systems can really benefit from the integration of multiple and heterogeneous sensors. In this paper we describe an innovative sensing floor. Thanks to its low cost and ease of installation, the floor is suitable for both private and public environments, from narrow zones to wide areas. The floor is made adding a sensing layer below commercial floating tiles. The sensor is scalable, reliable, and completely invisible to the users. The temporal and spatial resolutions of the data are high enough to identify the presence of people, to recognize their behavior and to detect events in a privacy compliant way. Experimental results on a real prototype implementation confirm the potentiality of the framework.

The research on innovative and natural interfaces aims at developing devices able to capture and understand the human behavior without the need of a direct interaction. In this paper we propose and describe a framework based on a sensing floor device. The pressure field generated by people or objects standing on the floor is captured and analyzed. Local and global features are computed by a low level processing unit and sent to high level interfaces. The framework can be used in different applications, such as entertainment, education or surveillance. A detailed description of the sensing element and the processing architectures is provided, together with some sample applications developed to test the device capabilities.

This paper presents a new μController-based embedded system devoted to vibration analysis for fault diagnosis in rotating machine. The developed system is based on advanced spectra methods, such as Wavelet and Fourier Transform, to emphasize the harmonic content of the considered signal thus facilitating early fault diagnosis. Suitable algorithms have been developed for such complex methods to run on a μC featuring limited computing resources. The cost and performance of our system are compatible with integration into industrial machines for continuous monitoring of their status. Moreover, the developed system is easily customizable and adaptable to a variety of automatic industrial machines.

We present our ongoing work, an application framework created to extend the concept of natural and tangible interfaces to environments composed of many interactive systems disseminated in an indoor space. In such environments users can perform solo or collaborative activities using different systems (like interactive tabletops or walls) and interacting with them through tangible smart objects provided with sensors, storage, processing and wireless communication capabilities. The smart objects become the representatives of the user navigating in the environment, and while retaining their basic affordance suggested by their shape, can assume different roles in relation to the system they approach. We investigated some application scenarios and present early observations related to the design and implementation, as well as future directions.

Wireless Body Area Sensor Networks (WBASN) are an emerging technology enabling the design of natural human–computer interfaces (HCI). Automatic recognition of human motion, gestures, and activities is studied in several contexts. For example, mobile computing technology is being considered as a replacement of traditional input systems. Moreover, body posture and activity monitoring can be used for entertainment and health-care applications. However, until now, little work has been done to develop flexible and efficient WBASN solutions suitable for a wide range of applications. Their requirements pose new challenges for sensor network designs, such as optimizing traditional solutions for use as environmental monitoring-like applications and developing on-the-field stress tests. In this paper, we demonstrate the flexibility of a custom-designed WBASN called WiMoCA with respect to a wide range of posture and activity recognition applications by means of practical implementation and on-the-field testing. Nodes of the network mounted on different parts of the human body exploit tri-axial accelerometers to detect its movements. The advanced digital Micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) based inertial sensor has been chosen for WiMoCA because it demonstrated high flexibility of use in many different situations, providing the chance to exploit both static and dynamic acceleration components for different purposes. Furthermore, the sensibility and accuracy of the sensing element is perfectly adequate for monitoring human movement, while keeping cost low and size compact, thus meeting our requirements. We implemented three types of applications, stressing the WBASN in many aspects. In fact, they are characterized by different requirements in terms of accuracy, timeliness, and computation distributed on sensing nodes. For each application, we describe its implementation, and we discuss results about performance and power consumption.

In this paper we describe TANGerINE, a tangible tabletop environment in which users can interact with digital contents manipulating tangible smart objects. Such objects provide continuous data about their status through the embedded wireless sensors, while an overhead computer vision module tracks their position and orientation. Merging sensing data, the system is able to detect a richer language of gestures and manipulations both on the tabletop and in its surroundings, enabling for a more expressive interaction language across different contexts.

Body Area Sensor Networks (BASN) are an emerging technology enabling the design of natural Human Computer Interfaces (HCI) in the context of Ambient Intelligence. This class of interactive applications poses new challenges on sensor network design that are hard to be faced using traditional solutions optimized for environmental monitoringlike applications. In this paper we present a novel solution for wireless and wearable posture recognition based on a custom-designed wireless body area sensor network, called WiMoCA. Nodes of the network, mounted on different parts of the human body, exploit tri-axial accelerometers to detect body postures. Afterwards we discuss results of interactive performance and power consumption optimizations required to match application constraints.

This paper presents the design and implementation of a wireless sensor node for a Motion Capture system with Accelerometers (WiMoCA). It is composed by a tri-axial integrated accelerometer a microcontroller and a wireless transceiver WiMoCA nodes have been exploited to build a Wireless Body Area Sensor Network (WBASN) that allows to implement a wireless/wearable distributed gesture recognition system where nodes are mounted on many parts of the human body. We describe the hardware architecture and all the software layers supporting the recognition system. We also show characterization experiments on WiMoCA nodes that highlight how their performance and power consumption levels make them suitable to HCI applications.

This brief demonstrates that conventional thin-oxide EEPROM cells can be programmed (erased) in the nanosecond time scale with voltages lower than 18 V still featuring data retention times of the order of a few hours after 100K program/erase (P/E) cycles, Our results suggest that thin-oxide nonvolatile (NV) memory; devices can be suitable for fast read/write dynamic applications, at least when high cycling endurance is not a primary specification.

This work investigates the possibility of programming nonvolatile memories in the ns time scale, for possible replacement of DRAMs, at least in special applications where low-power requirements do not allow frequent data refreshing. The study demonstrates the possibility of using high voltage tunneling pulses to achieve program times significantly shorter than 100 ns with acceptable oxide damage.

Hot-carrier currents and the induced degradation mechanisms in lateral double-diffused MOS (LDMOS) transistors for smart power applications are investigated in detail. Three different regions within the device where significant hot-carrier generation can occur depending on bias as well as device technological parameters have been identified, Guidelines to suppress the degradation mechanisms involving the two lightly doped regions of the device not overlapped by the gate electrode, responsible for the stronger device degradation, are provided. Devices optimized according to the given guidelines have been fabricated and demonstrate a strong hot-carrier resistance.

Special MOS tunneling structures which, avoiding the obscuring effects of the polysilicon layer, exhibit excellent light emission characteristics, have been fabricated and tested. For the first time, it is shown that the experimental photon energy distributions of MOS tunnel diodes biased in the Fowler-Nordheim regime exhibit a peak at about 1.6 eV, likely due to hot-carrier radiative recombination phenomena.

This paper suggests the use of high-voltage tunneling bursts for (virtually) SILC-free current injection in ultra-thin MOS structures and indicates the possibility of fast programming of tunnel-based nonvolatile memories.

This paper presents an original method based on capacitance measurements, that is able to localize and estimate hot-electron-induced oxide charge in double-diffused MOS (DMOS) transistors. The method is validated by means of two-dimensional (2-D) numerical simulation. Preliminary results obtained with state-of-the-art devices are presented as example of application.

In this paper, combined gate-to-channel (C-GSD) and gate-to-bulk (C-GB) capacitance measurements are used in order to extract quantitative information about hot-carrier degradation in MOS transistors. An analytical model, explaining the results of accelerated degradation experiments, is presented to establish a simple relationship between C-GSD and C-GB changes and the stress-induced charges Q(ox) and Q(it) trapped in the oxide or in interface states, respectively. A method, validated by means of two-dimensional (2-D) numerical simulations, is proposed to determine Q(ox) and Q(it) directly from the measured capacitances, and is applied to experimental data. The new technique considerably improves the capabilities of previous capacitive methods because it can yield a quantitative determination of Q(ox) and Q(it).