Abstract
This paper proposes a real-time system to provide location based guidance and obstacle avoidance of blind persons in indoor environments. The system integrates navigation features based on visual recognition of markers and the detection and classification of possible obstacles in front of the blind person. The system uses the Microsoft Kinect sensor to acquire RGB-D images of the scene. The RGB camera provides input for a real-time tracking algorithm which identifies a trained set of wall-mounted visual markers. The user's pose is estimated combining marker information with GIS data. Depth information is used to classify nearby obstacles. The results of experimental tests with two blind subjects are presented and discussed. © 2016 ACM.

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eCall is a car system which automatically calls for help in case of a car accident. The system sends a minimum set of data containing information about the occurrence, such as the geographic location and the vehicle identification. Simultaneously, a 112-voice connection is established. Therefore, the operator at the Public-Safety Answering Point (PSAP) is able to hear what is happening in the vehicle and actually communicate with the occupant(s). However if the occupant(s)'s are deaf or has earing impairments he will not be able to describe the situation using the voice channel established. This paper proposes a solution for this problem extending the SOSPhone concept, developed for enabling universal access to emergency services. A prototype of an application integrated with the eCall that enables the communication with deaf people or earing impaired people is presented. The solution makes use of touch interfaces, embedding the emergency protocols in the user's device, gathering information with an iconographic interface. (C) 2013 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

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Over the last decades, CSCW research has undergone significant structural changes and has grown steadily with manifested differences from other fields in terms of theory building, methodology, and socio-technicality. This paper provides a quantitative assessment of the scientific literature for mapping the intellectual structure of CSCW research and its scientific development over a 15-year period (2001-2015). A total of 1713 publications were subjected to examination in order to draw statistics and depict dynamic changes to shed new light upon the growth, spread, and collaboration of CSCW devoted outlets. Overall, our study characterizes top (cited and downloaded) papers, citation patterns, prominent authors and institutions, demographics, collaboration patterns, most frequent topic clusters and keywords, and social mentions by country, discipline, and professional status. The results highlight some areas of improvement for the field and a lot of well-established topics which are changing gradually with impact on citations and downloads. Statistical models reveal that the field is predominantly influenced by fundamental and highly recognized scientists and papers. A small number of papers without citations, the growth of the number of papers by year, and an average number of more than 39 citations per paper in all venues ensure the field a healthy and evolving nature. We discuss the implications of these findings in terms of the influence of CSCW on the larger field of HCI.

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Building automation systems contribute to reduce electricity costs by managing distributed energy resources in an efficient way. However, a large share of consumption cannot be optimized through automation alone, since it mainly depends on human interactions. Gamification can be used as one form of changing users’ behaviours [1], but its implementation does require assumptions on the behaviour patterns that need to be identified, encouraged, or discouraged. To tackle this problem, we propose a framework that joins building automation solutions with gamification techniques to enable behavioural demand response.

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