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Providing Access to Educational TV for Children Using RFID Technology

2022 , Zapata-Rodríguez M. , Álvarez-Tello J. , Arias Flores, Hugo Patricio

Television is a communication medium found in most homes, facilitating accessibility to educational content through the reading-learning process. This paper presents a control system for educational television that allows the selection and playback of pre-recorded videos in a television decoder using RFID tags. This has been designed based on a controller that allows replacing the commands sent by a conventional remote control. To meet this educational objective, a prototype is developed from the mechanical, electronic and computer concept, to integrate a technological proposal that facilitates reading-learning, through a televised program and satellite transmission, integrating an instrument of personalized pedagogical assistance to an Ecuadorian spectacled bear for the assistance of children of a young age or with any type of disability that prevents them from handling a remote control. As a result, we obtained the experimental development of a basic prototype for learning-reading that works with connection to satellite equipment and activates the components for learning through television by means of an RFDI system. A unique tag is used for each pre-recorded program. When the RFID reader reads a tag that has been previously assigned, the TV module will transmit the sequence of signals needed to the TV decoder to play the specific movie or report. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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Q’inqu: Inclusive Board Game for the Integration of People with Disabilities

2020 , Jadán Guerrero, Janio , Arias Flores, Hugo Patricio , Altamirano, I.

The educational inclusion of people with disabilities continues to be a great challenge for society. Due to the field’s diversity and complexity, people with disabilities have few opportunities to be integrated into educational activities or even entertainment. This article describes a novel educational resource developed within the field of applied technologies. Q’inqu is an inclusive board game that encourages the family and educational inclusion of people with disabilities. Q’inqu is a Quechua word meaning “Labyrinth”. This is a metaphor for the challenges faced by families living with a person with disabilities, and it also reflects its narrative structure based on the “Legend of the Incas’ treasure”. Q’inqu has the general theme of a traditional board game where turns are taken until the treasure is found. What makes it different is the integration of inclusive elements through the use of technology. There are cards with a braille code, a rectangular board with high relief, and a circular board with textures. An App reads QR codes and also patterns, which present additional information based on augmented reality. These features provide support to blind players and to those who are unable to read, making the game both entertaining and educational. Q’inqu was developed and tested by a multidisciplinary team of 80 people, which included students and professionals from design, education and pedagogy. The most relevant result was that out of 367 ideas that were presented, it was awarded first prize in the category Toys for children with disabilities in the CMA contest held in Ecuador. © 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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Detection of Student Behavior Profiles Applying Neural Networks and Decision Trees

2020 , Guevara Maldonado, César Byron , Sanchez-Gordon S. , Arias Flores, Hugo Patricio , Varela Aldas, José , Castillo Salazar, David Ricardo , Borja M. , Fierro-Saltos W. , Rivera R. , Hidalgo-Guijarro J. , Yandún-Velasteguí M.

Education worldwide is a significant aspect for the development of the peoples and much more in developing countries such as those in Latin America, where less than 22% of its inhabitants have higher education. Research in this field is a matter of interest for each of the governments to improve education policies. Therefore, the analysis of data on the behavior of a student in an educational institution is of utmost importance, because multiple aspects of progress or student dropout rates during their professional training period can be identified. The most important variables to identify the student’s behavior are the socio-economic ones, since the psychological state and the economic deficiencies that the student faces while is studying can be detected. This data provides grades, scholarships, attendance and information on student progress. During the first phase of the study, all the information is analyzed and it is determined which provides relevant data to develop a profile of a student behavior, as well as the pre-processing of the data obtained. In this phase, voracious algorithms are applied for the selection of attributes, such as greedy stepwise, Chi-squared test, Anova, RefiefF, Gain Radio, among others. In this work, we apply the artificial intelligence techniques, the results obtained are compared to generate a normal and unusual behavior of each student according to their professional career. In addition, the most optimal model that has had a higher accuracy percentage, false positive rate, false negative rate and mean squared error in the tests results are determined. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.

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Development of Behavior Profile of Users with Visual Impairment

2020 , Guevara Maldonado, César Byron , Arias Flores, Hugo Patricio , Varela Aldas, José , Castillo Salazar, David Ricardo , Borja M. , Fierro-Saltos W. , Rivera R. , Hidalgo-Guijarro J. , Yandún-Velasteguí M.

The interaction of the user with visual impairment with assistive technologies, and in particular with screen readers, generates a group of actions and events during their navigation. These interactions are defined as behavioral patterns, which have a sequence that occurs at specific time slot. Understanding user behavior by analyzing their interaction with applications, in addition, details the characteristics, relationships, structures and functions of the sequence of actions in a specific application domain. The objective of this document is to find activity patterns from a set of commands used by the user, combining data mining and a Bayesian model. This model calculates the probability of the functions used with the screen reader and generates a behavior profile to improve the user experience. For this study, the screen reader JAWS version 2018, the Open Journal Systems platform version 3.0.1 and a computer with Windows 10 operating system were used. During the first phase, command history used by the user by interacting with the Open Journal Systems platform were collected. The result is that the accessibility of users with visual impairment to interact with the computer and its applications has been improved by applying this model. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.

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Twitter Mining for Multiclass Classification Events of Traffic and Pollution

2020 , Chamorro V. , Rivera R. , Varela Aldas, José , Castillo Salazar, David Ricardo , Borja Galeas, Carlos , Guevara Maldonado, César Byron , Arias Flores, Hugo Patricio , Fierro-Saltos W. , Hidalgo-Guijarro J. , Yandún-Velasteguí M.

During the last decade social media have generated tons of data, that is the primal information resource for multiple applications. Analyzing this information let us to discover almost immediately unusual situations, such as traffic jumps, traffic accidents, state of the roads, etc. This research proposes an approach for classifying pollution and traffic tweets automatically. Taking advantage of the information in tweets, it evaluates several machine learning supervised algorithms for text classification, where it determines that the support vector machine (SVM) algorithm achieves the highest accuracy value of 85,8% classifying events of traffic and not traffic. Furthermore, to determine the events that correspond to traffic or pollution we perform a multiclass classification. Where we obtain an accuracy of 78.9%. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.

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Technological Project Management Proposal for Designing a Social Robot

2023 , Zapata M. , Alvarez-Tello J. , Arias Flores, Hugo Patricio

Introduction: Social robotics is integrated into everyday activities, addressing social interactions with diverse groups of people. Therefore, the development of Autonomous Social Robot for Ecuadorian Universities (ASREU), an evolutionary social robotic platform in hardware and software that allows the exploratory research of social, technological, and energetic variables for the generation of social robotics prototypes. Method: To improve the management of the project, the structures for the development of technological projects are analyzed from the administrative management of the project, as well as the execution and technological implementation of the Results: A diagram is obtained to identify the interaction of technical, engineering and scientific working groups and the interaction with the project management, as well as a roadmap for the development of technological products defining the systems, the type of prototyping and the intellectual property protection, in addition to the circular strategy for the integration from and for society in the area of social robotics and the identification with the evolution of the prototype with the corresponding intellectual property protection for feasible results to Conclusion: Currently the development of technological projects lead mostly software developments in social robotics, when integrated with physical systems (mechanical, electrical and electronic), there is planning from traditional environments and agile environments, which need a coexistence to jump from one to another environment. Finally, guidelines and tools have been developed to facilitate the management and design of social robots, in the case of ASREU, a 6 DoF and autonomous mobile robot (AMR). © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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Control of an Arm-Hand Prosthesis by Mental Commands and Blinking

2020 , Varela Aldas, José , Castillo Salazar, David Ricardo , Borja Galeas, Carlos , Guevara Maldonado, César Byron , Arias Flores, Hugo Patricio , Fierro-Saltos, W. , Rivera, R. , Hidalgo-Guijarro, J. , Yandún-Velasteguí, M.

Patients who lack upper and lower extremities have difficulties in carrying out their daily activities. The new technological advances have allowed the development of robotic applications to support people with disabilities, also, portable electroencephalographic (EEG) sensors are increasingly accessible and allow the development of new proposals which involve the mental control of electronic systems. This work presents the control by mental orders of an arm-hand prosthesis using low-cost devices, the objective is to command the arm using the user’s attention and blinking, where the components are a brain signal sensor, a prosthesis, an Arduino board, six servomotors, and a computer. The developed program in Matlab allows controlling the arm by means of an attention level y blinking. The results show the functioning of the system through experimental tests and a usability test is applied, finally, the conclusions establish adequate coordination in the movements of the prosthesis and the patient indicate satisfaction with the proposal. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.

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Analysis of the Level of Accessibility of Scientific Online Conferences for Blind Participants

2021 , Arias Flores, Hugo Patricio , Sanchez-Gordon S. , Calle-Jimenez T.

The change generated by the virtualization of activities due to the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the way people participate in countless activities. Scientific conferences, like many other events, were forced by the circumstances to change from face-to-face to online overnight. The goal of this study is to identify the accessibility barriers that the platforms used by scientific online conferences pose for blind participants. The research methodology used was experiential introspection complemented by automated testing. Exploratory tests were conducted by a blind researcher using the JAWS screen reader. Besides, the accessibility evaluation tool WAVE was used to identify non-conformances with the web content accessibility guidelines WCAG. As a result, it was found in some cases a null level of accessibility and, in other cases, complexity was detected in the access to activities. As for no conformances with WCAG, two of the most prominent were empty links and the absence of headings for efficient screen reader navigation. The automated tool showed errors and alerts that need to be fixed in the teleconferencing platforms evaluated. It is presumed that, unfortunately, the moderately or even basic concepts for the participation of users with visual disabilities and blind are not being considered in the platforms used to host virtual scientific conferences. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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Long-Distance Relationships: Use of Technology Advances in Communication, Idealization and Satisfaction

2021 , Acosta-Rodas P. , Arias Flores, Hugo Patricio , Ramos Galarza, Carlos

Long distance romantic relationships are becoming more and more common nowadays. There can be various concrete reasons that are the causes for this occurrence, among the most common, the pursuit of career opportunities, educational goals, military service, and migratory issues. The aim of this study is answering the question: how is possible to maintain this kind of relationship? This is explained from two variables: the first one refers to the technology advances which help the communication and the second one studied from the psychological periscope, the romantic idealization. It is approach the perception of this new type of relationships in the general population. Understanding technology influences in human life could help to develop more technological advances to the people to feel closer and to keep healthy relationships with themselves and the others, as well, it could bring lights to counseling and psychological therapy. © 2021, The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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Financial Marketing at the Border: A View from Customers

2022 , Arias Flores, Hugo Patricio , Quinde-Sari F. , Jadán Guerrero, Janio , Ramos Galarza, Carlos

Border activities are developed with unconventional rules or are not aligned with large cities in their total context. Thus, the modalities of exchange of currency between borders, is an activity that is carried out personally and without intermediaries, that is, person to person, both on one side and the other, the rules of the sale of currency are governed in some way with the limits that are established in each country, there are more bands in which the money changers move. The exchange is carried out in a public square, in which the marketing is done by shouting to attract customers, in this sense the question arises, how well known or used are the digital media of financial entities on the border? A survey was carried out on the clients of two financial entities on the Colombian-Ecuadorian border, to establish how well known and used digital media are by clients and if the website complies with or maintains any marketing strategy toward the client. The results of the exploratory factor analysis identified two factors: functional and safety. On the other hand, convergent validity is favorable with a mean variance extracted close to 0.5. Evidence that the factorial structure establishes a timely adjustment for the confirmatory factor analysis. The hypothesis has been proven that frontier financial institutions are ready to jump into the third stage of the expanded e-commerce model. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.