Examines various speech technologies deployed in healthcare service robots to maximize the robot's ability to interpret user input. Demonstrates how robot anthropomorphic features and etiquette in behavior promotes user-positive emotions, acceptance of robots, and compliance with robot requests. Analyzes how multimodal medical-service robots and other cyber-physical systems can reduce mistakes and mishaps in the operating room. Evaluates various input methods for improving acceptance of robots in the older adult population. Presents case studies of cognitively and socially engaging robots in the long-term care setting for helping older adults with activities of daily living and in the pediatric setting for helping children with autism spectrum conditions and metabolic disorders. Speech and Automata in Health Care forges new ground by closely analyzing how three separate disciplines - speech technology, robotics, and medical/surgical/assistive care - intersect with one another, resulting in an innovative way of diagnosing and treating both juvenile and adult illnesses and conditions. This includes the use of speech-enabled robotics to help the elderly population cope with common problems associated with aging caused by the diminution in their sensory, auditory and motor capabilities. By examining the emerging nexus of speech, automata, and health care, the authors demonstrate the exciting potential of automata, both speech-driven and multimodal, to affect the healthcare delivery system so that it better meets the needs of the populations it serves. This book provides both empirical research findings and incisive literature reviews that demonstrate some of the more novel uses of speech-enabled and multimodal automata in the operating room, hospital ward, long-term care facility, and in the home. Studies backed by major universities, research institutes, and by EU-funded collaborative projects are debuted in this volume. This volume provides a wealth of timely material for industrial engineers, speech scientists, computational linguists, and for signal processing and intelligent systems design experts. Topics include: Spoken Interaction with Healthcare Robots Service Robot Feature Effects on Patient Acceptance/Emotional Response Designing Embodied and Virtual Agents for the Operating Room The Emerging Role of Robotics for Personal Health Management in the Older-Adult Population Why Input Methods for Robots that Serve the Older Adult Are Critical for Usability Socially and Cognitively Engaging Robots in the Long-Term Care Setting Voice-Enabled Assistive Robots for Managing Autism Spectrum Conditions ASR and TTS for Voice-Controlled Robot Interactions in Treating Children with Metabolic Disorders

This book offers an overview of some recent advances in the Computational Bioacoustics methods and technology. In the focus of discussion is the pursuit of scalability, which would facilitate real-world applications of different scope and purpose, such as wildlife monitoring, biodiversity assessment, pest population control, and monitoring the spread of disease transmitting mosquitoes. The various tasks of Computational Bioacoustics are described and a wide range of audio parameterization and recognition tasks related to the automated recognition of species and sound events is discussed. Many of the Computational Bioacoustics methods were originally developed for the needs of speech, audio, or image processing, and afterwards were adapted to the requirements of automated acoustic recognition of species, or were elaborated further to address the challenges of real-world operation in 24/7 mode. The interested reader is encouraged to follow the numerous references and links to web resources for further information and insights. This book is addressed to Software Engineers, IT experts, Computer Science researchers, Bioacousticians, and other practitioners concerned with the creation of new tools and services, aimed at enhancing the technological support to Computational Bioacoustics applications.

Signals and systems enjoy wide application in industry and daily life, and understanding basic concepts of the subject area is of importance to undergraduates majoring in engineering. With rigorous mathematical deduction, this introductory text book is helpful for students who study communications engineering, electrical and electronic engineering, and control engineering. Additionally, supplementary materials are provided for self-learners.

Patient-Provider Communication: Roles for Speech-Language Pathologists and Other Health Care Professionals presents timely information regarding effective patient-centered communication across a variety of health care settings. Speech-language pathologists, who serve the communication needs of children and adults, as well as professionals from medical and allied health fields will benefit from this valuable resource. This text is particularly relevant because of changes in health care law and policy. It focuses on value-based care, patient engagement, and positive patient experiences that produce better outcomes. Authors describe evidence-based strategies that support communication vulnerable patients, including individuals who have difficulty speaking, hearing, understanding, seeing, reading, and writing, as well as patients whose challenges reflect limited health literacy, and/or differences in language, culture, religion, sexual orientation, and so on. Topics addressed include patient-provider communication in medical education, emergency and disaster scenarios, doctor's offices and clinics, adult and pediatric acute care settings, rehabilitation, long-term residential care, and hospice/palliative care situations. The editors are recognized internationally for their work in the field of communication disorders and have been active in the area of patient-provider communication for many years. Patient-Provider Communication is a must-have resource for speech-language pathologists and other health care providers at the forefront of quality patient-centered care.

Advances in Ubiquitous Computing: Cyber-Physical Systems, Smart Cities and Ecological Monitoring debuts some of the newest methods and approaches to multimodal user-interface design, safety compliance, formal code verification and deployment requirements, as they pertain to cyber-physical systems, smart homes and smart cities, and biodiversity monitoring. In this anthology, the authors assiduously examine a panoply of topics related to wireless sensor networks. These topics include interacting with smart-home appliances and biomedical devices, designing multilingual speech recognition systems that are robust to vehicular, mechanical and other noises common to large metropolises, and an examination of new methods of speaker recognition to control for the emotion-state of the speaker, which can easily impede speaker verification over a wireless medium. This volume recognizes that any discussion of pervasive computing in smart cities must not end there, as the perilous effects of climate change proves that our lives are not circumscribed by the geographically sculpted boundaries of cities, counties, countries, or continents. Contributors address present and emerging technologies of scalable biodiversity monitoring: pest control, disease transmission, environmental monitoring, and habitat preservation. The need to collect, store, process, and interpret vast amounts of data originating from sources spread over large areas and for prolonged periods of time requires immediate data storage and processing, reliable networking, and solid communication infrastructure, along with intelligent data analysis and interpretation methods that can resolve contradictions and uncertainty in the data—all of which can be bolstered by modern advances in ubiquitous computing. Examines the history, scope and advances in ubiquitous computing, including threats to wildlife, tracking of disease, smart cities and Wireless Sensor Networks Discusses user interface design, implementation and deployment of cyber-physical systems, such as wireless sensor networks, Internet of Things devices, and other networks of physical devices that have computational capabilities and reporting devices Covers the need for improved data sharing networks

Today, autonomous robots are used in a rather limited range of applications such as exploration of inaccessible locations, cleaning floors, mowing lawns etc. However, ongoing hardware improvements (and human fantasy) steadily reveal new robotic applications of significantly higher sophistication. For such applications, the crucial bottleneck in the engineering process tends to shift from physical boundaries to controller generation. As an attempt to automatize this process, Evolutionary Robotics has successfully been used to generate robotic controllers of various types. However, a major challenge of the field remains the evolution of truly complex behavior. Furthermore, automatically created controllers often lack analyzability which makes them useless for safety-critical applications. In this book, a simple controller model based on Finite State Machines is proposed which allows a straightforward analysis of evolved behaviors. To increase the model's evolvability, a procedure is introduced which, by adapting the genotype-phenotype mapping at runtime, efficiently traverses both the behavioral search space as well as (recursively) the search space of genotype-phenotype mappings. Furthermore, a data-driven mathematical framework is proposed which can be used to calculate the expected success of evolution in complex environments.

In higher education systems, equal importance must be given to differently abled students. However, not all educational institutions have infrastructure and facilities to admit these students even though accessibility and support for these students is growing. There are many schemes, facilities, services, and financial assistance available to these students along with new assistive technologies that are making teaching and learning processes more effective. While using new technologies in education systems such as e-learning and blended learning, these students need special attention as well as some advanced training and additional features in the technology itself that better help them become familiar with it. Understanding the demands and requirements of differently abled students is the best way to provide them with quality education. Assistive Technologies for Differently Abled Students explores how to implement effective assistive technologies and other related services for providing differently abled students an education that is high quality and equal to their peers, enabling them to go on and excel in their field and obtain employment. Topics that are highlighted within this book include an overview for the different types of diverse assistive technologies for all types of students including students with visual impairments, learning disabilities, physical challenges, and more. This book is ideal for school administrators, researchers of higher educational institutes, non-governmental organizations, assistive technology experts, IT professionals, social workers, inservice and preservice teachers, teacher educators, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students looking for information on the types of assistive technologies being employed in education for all types of differently abled students.