BackgroundIn 2020 Globocan reported nearly 1.4 million new cases of gynaecology cancer worldwide. Cancer related fatigue has been identified as a symptom that can be present for gynaecology cancer patients many years after treatment. The current evidence around the management of this symptom suggests that exercise has the most positive outcome. However, some ambiguity remains around the evidence and whether it can address all areas of fatigue effectively. More recently, other interventions such as mindfulness have begun to show a favourable response to the management of symptoms for cancer patients. To date there has been little research that explores the feasibility of using both these interventions together in a gynaecology cancer population. This study aims to explore the feasibility of delivering an intervention that involves mindfulness and mindfulness and exercise and will explore the effect of this on fatigue, sleep, mood and quality of life.Methods/designThis randomised control trial will assess the interventions outcomes using a pre and post design and will also include a qualitative process evaluation. Participants will be randomised into one of 2 groups. One group will undertake mindfulness only and the other group will complete exercise and mindfulness. Both groups will use a mobile application to complete these interventions over 8 weeks. The mobile app will be tailored to reflect the group the participants have drawn during randomisation. Self-reported questionnaire data will be assessed at baseline prior to commencing intervention and at post intervention. Feasibility will be assessed through recruitment, adherence, retention and attrition. Acceptability and participant perspective of participation (process evaluation), will be explored using focus groups.DiscussionThis trial will hope to evidence and demonstrate that combination of two interventions such as mindfulness and exercise will further improve outcomes of fatigue and wellbeing in gynaecology cancer. The results of this study will be used to assess (i) the feasibility to deliver this type of intervention to this population of cancer patients using a digital platform; (ii) assist this group of women diagnosed with cancer to manage fatigue and other symptoms of sleep, mood and impact their quality of life.Trial registrationNCT05561413.

Medical advances have allowed people to live longer and this has presented different challenges to support them to keep living independently at home. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected the situation with less care staff and resources available for the elderly, which have also been spending more time at their homes without external contact. Elderly people are typically looked after by formal (professional carers) and informal (relatives and friends) carers. The work of carers has been increasingly supported using technologies for communication and wellbeing monitoring of Activities of Daily Living (ADLs) that elderly people perform in order to detect abnormal events that could negatively affect their wellbeing. This paper presents the design of a rule-based and ADL analysis system that takes data from different sensors as input and presents a number of visualisations in a dashboard as output. The dashboard is as user friendly as possible for both formal and informal carers of elderly people. It is intended that the proposed system can identify both immediate problems, but also trends and deviations from the individual’s norm, or that of a comparable cohort, which indicate the opportunity for pro-active care. This research has been done in collaboration with the Kraydel company, whose staff supported with ideas and with the commercial needs to be considered in the solution design presented in this paper.

It is widely recognized that interdisciplinary research (IR) is an important tool in facilitating the development of efficient solutions to address current societal challenges. Recent developments, compounded by the global covid-19 pandemic, have boosted the use of mobile technology to deliver health interventions remotely using digital technologies. This work presents a reusable software platform designed to facilitate the implementation and delivery of digital interventions delivered through mobile applications. The platform is composed of three main elements: (i) a central server-side application for secure data storage, (ii) a customizable mobile app for data collection, and (iii) a customizable web portal for administrative use and data analysis. The implemented platform was evaluated in two pilot studies delivered in parallel during the pandemic: an online Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) intervention in women with Vulvodynia, and a study on air quality perception. Results on measured adherence confirm how digital platforms can support the delivery of remote interventions. Two groups, totaling 31 participants, were recruited for the two studies. Collected adherence data and feedback from participants were mostly positive with 88% of positive feedback.

Objectives: To describe and critique a systematic multidisciplinary approach to user engagement, and selection and evaluation of sensor technologies for development of a sensor-based Digital Toolkit for assessment of movement in children with cerebral palsy (CP).Methods: A sequential process was employed comprising three steps: Step 1: define user requirements, by identifying domains of interest; Step 2: map domains of interest to potential sensor technologies; and Step 3: evaluate and select appropriate sensors to be incorporated into the Digital Toolkit. The process employed a combination of principles from frameworks based in either healthcare or technology design.Results: A broad range of domains were ranked as important by clinicians, patients and families, and industry users. These directly informed the device selection and evaluation process that resulted in three sensor-based technologies being agreed for inclusion in the Digital Toolkit, for use in a future research study.Conclusion: This report demonstrates a systematic approach to user engagement and device selection and evaluation during the development of a sensor-based solution to a healthcare problem. It also provides a narrative on the benefits of employing a multidisciplinary approach throughout the process. This work uses previous frameworks for evaluating sensor technologies and expands on the methods used for user engagement.

This paper introduces at a high level the concept of Autonomic Robotics based on the Autonomic Computing paradigm with the aim to achieve a systematic means to obtaining self-managing and autonomous robotic craft software for future space missions. It briefly reflects on the author’s research that took place in the noughties with NASA GSFC, in particular on the ANTS concept mission Autonomic Computing stream before briefly highlighting the authors research streams in the twenty-tens moving towards NewSpace or Space 2.0. Three specific streams of research within this area are summarised; cooperation between the autonomic robotic craft, an autonomic robotic architecture (and case-studies to derive such) and the development of an Autonomic Systems capability model for CubeSats.

This work compares the efficiency of three co-operation strategies that enable a simulated swarm to collaborate on a searching task. Communication between swarm entities is in the form of direct peer-to-peer messages. This contrasts with most swarm research which seeks to mimic the indirect communication observed in nature. A simulation was created using C#, swarm robots of different colours are placed on a 2D grid and given the task of finding and collecting items that match their colour. If they encounter an item of the opposite colour, they send a message to their closest neighbours who then pass it on to other swarm entities. Robots that match the colour of the item in the message can respond to the help message and move to the item’s location. The co-operation strategies dictate how many robots are permitted to respond to a help message, the number of responders can be one or many robots depending on the strategy that is being used. The first strategy permits an unlimited number of swarm robots to respond to a help message. This can lead to an inefficient outcome as the amount of time it takes to find all items is increased due to the mass movement of the swarm to one item. The second strategy limits the number of responders to a select few. The third strategy implements a dialogue with other swarm members and chooses one robot to be the responder. Several metrics are recorded and compared in order to analyse the performance of the strategies. The signal communication reach can be configured from low to high, a higher range increases the traffic between the swarm. The research explores the tradeoffs involved with using different signal ranges. A higher range increases intra-swarm communication which results in a larger number of wasted steps taken when responding to help requests. When the signal range is low, the overall simulation time increases as there is less swarm co-operation. Future research will involve the implementation of an Autonomic Manager that can analyse the metrics and switch communication strategies in real time to adjust to changing circumstances.

Inadvertent falls can cause serious, and potentially fatal injuries, to at risk individuals. One such community of at-risk individuals is the elderly population where age related complications, such as osteoporosis and dementia, can further increase the incidence and negative impact of such falls. Notably, falls within that community has been identified as the leading cause of injury related preventable death, hospitalization and reduction to quality of life. In such cases, rapid detection of, and reaction, to fall events has shown to be critical to reduce the negative effects of falls within this community. Currently, a range of fall detection solutions exist, however, they have several deficiencies related to the core approach that has been adopted. This study has developed an ensemble of thermal vision-based, big data facilitated, solutions which aim to address some of these deficiencies. An evaluation of these logical and data-driven processes has occurred with the promising results presented within this manuscript. Finally, opportunities future work and real-world evaluation have occurred and are underway.

Foot ulcers are a common complication of diabetes and are the leading cause of amputation amongst those with diabetes. Research has shown that, an increase of two degrees Celsius in the skin temperature on the plantar surface of the foot can be an early indication of injury or inflammation. Early detection and treatment of a hotspot region may reduce the risk of an ulcer developing. This paper presents a thermography-based approach for detecting temperature hotspots on the foot. The system comprises a bespoke application and a thermal camera attachment which captures RGB images and a temperature matrix. Web-based services process the captured data and detect whether any regions of higher temperature are present on the foot, in comparison to the other foot. The accuracy of this system has been verified through a pilot study. Hotspots were simulated on the feet of 10 healthy participants. The results indicated that hotspots were correctly detected for 60% of the participants. We discuss some reasons why the results were inaccurate for the remaining four participants. Furthermore, we also suggest some potential enhancements to the system with the aim of increasing the precision of the results.

This paper introduces at a high level the concept of Autonomic Robotics based on the Autonomic Computing paradigm with the aim to achieve a systematic means to obtaining self-managing and autonomous robotic software for future space missions. Three specific streams of research within this area are summarised; cooperation between the autonomic robots, an autonomic robotic architecture and the development of middleware for easier and agile software development for such systems.

Autonomic Computing is concerned with improving the self-management and adaptability in software. In this paper, we propose an Autonomic concept that would allow robots to interact with each other using an alternative communication protocol in the event that direct wireless digital communications fail. The aim of the research is to create enhanced levels of autonomous behavior that enable the robots to still communicate via a more primitive mechanism. The alternative communication protocol uses a form of textual semaphore. The visual means of communication involves processing textual images that contain meaningful messages or instructions. These textual images are transmitted via a display screen mounted on the robot. The robot receiving the message does so by taking a photo and performing image processing. The research focus is on how robots could adapt to a hardware communications failure by using the technique outlined here. Our experiments have proven that a robot can read text from a screen and respond with an action, e.g., to rotate. Results also indicate that further work is needed in the area of image processing in order to improve the accuracy of the character recognition. It is hoped that these results will lead to further research that can build upon the ideas presented and seek to establish a two-way conversation as opposed to a monologue.

This paper proposes an Autonomic architecture thatwill enable mobile robots to self-manage and collaborate byusing control loops to monitor their internal state and externalenvironment. The Autonomic Computing MAPE-K controlloop is used to design a Robot Autonomic Element and aMapping Autonomic Element; each can exchange data andcollaborate to find an object located within a room. A review ofthe sensor capabilities of the X80-H mobile robot platform isundertaken with emphasis on how useful each sensor will be tothe proposed research. A literature review of other projectsthat feature robot collaboration is also included.

This paper presents an interactive, user-friendly tutoring system, which can be used to enhance students' understanding of the principles behind data structures. The system has the capability to display data structures graphically as well as providing the facility to allow users to perform the basic operations on the data structure generated. An animation-based approach has been developed to provide a step-by-step illustration of how various traversal techniques are performed in the context of binary search and AVL trees data structure. The system has a tutorial mode incorporating exercises, where students can learn basic concepts operations associated with each data structure. The evaluation was carried out by computer science undergraduate students in the School of Computing and Mathematics. It is generally acknowledged that the system was very useful in teaching students about data structures. This system can be used as an effective supplement to traditional teaching methods.

— In this paper, we describe two strategies that allow a swarm of simulated robots to cooperate. For a swarm of robots to function cooperatively, self-management and autonomy are essential. Direct communication is used to enable swarm entities to communicate. The research aim is to evaluate various architectures and protocols for cooperation strategies that enable swarm robots to ask for, and respond to requests for assistance. The work is in two phases. Only phase 1 is described in this paper. The first phase involves the creation of simulation environments of robot swarms. This phase enables us to develop, evaluate and refine suitable architectures and protocols for swarm cooperation. Using simulation, it is possible to assess swarm cooperation in the large (essentially hundreds or thousands of robots per swarm). In the second phase, the cooperation protocols developed from phase 1 will be trialed on a small number of physical robots, to evaluate the complexity introduced from the real world. The 1 st architecture simulated features a hierarchy with Ruler robots communicating with a swarm; the Ruler robots can request the help of the swarm. The swarm is only able to respond to the Rulers, intra-swarm communication is not possible. In the 2 nd architecture simulated, a non-hierarchical homogenous swarm is able to communicate by posting help messages to a centralized Message Board entity. In future experiments, architectures involving the incorporation of a Message Board role within each swarm robot, thus removing the disadvantages associated with having a centralized component, will be explored.