Varela Aldas, José
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Varela Aldas, José
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Ambato
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josevarela@uti.edu.ec
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57192546163

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Immersive virtual reality app to promote healthy eating in children

2020 , Fuentes E.M. , Varela Aldas, José , Palacios-Navarro G. , García-Magariño I.

An immersive virtual reality application was developed as a serious game to support children on their decisions about food, the system was composed by the Gear VR (Viewer and controller), and a phone which contains the mobile application developed in Unity, providing the immersive environment, the platform was based on a path where the player has to go through it choosing between different sort of meals and also between different physical activities, the effect of balanced diet plus adequate physical activity seems reflected on the avatar previously chosen by the user, the app was tested on 12 children between 8 and 10 years old during one week, children participated on the study after receiving an informed consent, analyzing the tendencies of food choice on children before and after, a notorious positive effect could be seen on the users according to the avatar analyzed at the end of the round, besides a System usability ore was also applied to evaluate the degree of usability of the app, reaching a ore of 88.33% which rates the app as very usable, this results were even better than what was planned at the beginning of the experience. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020.

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IoT-Based User Interface for Remote Control of a Mobile Robot

2023 , Varela Aldas, José , Palacios-Navarro G.

Recent advancements in mobile robot research have resulted in the development of precise robot control tools, while information technology research has focused on the Internet of Things (IoT) in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. This study evaluates a user interface designed for remote control of the Crowbot BOLT robot. This robot utilizes the ESP32 board and is controlled through the M5Stack Core2 kit with a touch screen. The user interface offers two modes of operation: touch-based buttons for movement control and gyroscope control based on the M5Stack’s angular position. Communication between the robot and the user interface is established using the MQTT protocol through the ThingSpeak server, allowing control from any location with a line of sight and internet connectivity. Operation data is collected by recording control orders and measuring sending times, while user acceptance is evaluated using an IoT-based technology acceptance model. The results indicate the need for remote control response time improvement and reveal low scores in perceived usefulness and influence social. In conclusion, the study demonstrates the feasibility of remote control of a mobile robot using the MQTT protocol, providing valuable insights for similar applications and considering user recommendations for future enhancements and system expansion. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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Head-mounted display-based application for cognitive training

2020 , Varela Aldas, José , Palacios-Navarro G. , Amariglio R. , García-Magariño I.

Virtual Reality (VR) has had significant advances in rehabilitation, due to the gamification of cognitive activities that facilitate treatment. On the other hand, Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) produces outstanding results due to the interactive features with the user. This work introduces a VR application for memory rehabilitation by walking through a maze and using the Oculus Go head-mounted display (HMD) technology. The mechanics of the game require memorizing geometric shapes while the player progresses in two modes, autonomous or manual, with two levels of difficulty depending on the number of elements to remember. The application is developed in the Unity 3D video game engine considering the optimization of computational resources to improve the performance in the processing and maintaining adequate benefits for the user, while the generated data is stored and sent to a remote server. The maze task was assessed with 29 subjects in a controlled environment. The obtained results show a significant correlation between participants’ response accuracy in both the maze task and a face–pair test. Thus, the proposed task is able to perform memory assessments. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.

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Internet of things (IoT)-based assistive system for patients with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA): a case report

2024 , Varela Aldas, José , vila-Armijos W. , Palacios-Navarro G.

Purpose: Assistive technologies based on IoT can contribute to improve quality of living of patients with severe motor difficulties by providing partial or total independence. The aim of this work was to analyse the usability and performance of an assistive system based on the IoT when is evaluated by a child patient with spinal muscular atrophy type 1 (SMA-I). Materials and methods: The study involved a child with SMA-I and his caregiver. The materials used include an M5Stack Core2 kit, a mobile app, and a smart switch based on the ESP-01S card. The patient sends requests to the caregiver from the app installed on the M5Stack Core2 to a mobile app, and controls smart switches located in the rooms. The system was tested by the participants for a period of 30 days to later evaluate its usability and performance. Results: The results show that the control function of smart switches is the most used and there is no decrease in interactions over the days for the system in general. In addition, the scores obtained from both usability tests (patient and caregiver) were 87.5% and 90%, respectively. The average performance of the entire system was 93.33%. Conclusion: The application of assistive technologies based on the IoT allows obtaining a practical solution that improves the development of daily activities in a patient with SMA-I. © 2024 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

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Electric Monitoring System for Residential Customers Using Wireless Technology

2022 , Buele, Jorge , Morales-Sánchez J.C. , Varela Aldas, José , Palacios-Navarro G. , Ayala-Chauvin, Manuel Ignacio

Power grids continue to develop and it is increasingly difficult to guarantee the quality of service offered to the user. In several developing countries, consumption is calculated on the basis of visual inspection, which is prone to errors. Consequently, this document outlines the construction of electrical consumption telemetering equipment. This is designed to reduce human error through manual measures and have a web backup that can be accessed from anywhere. To develop the prototype voltage and current sensors are used, and the signal is conditioned for the control stage. The processing unit is the Arduino Mega embedded board, which incorporates a GPRS Shield (General Packet Radio Services) that handles communication with a LAMP server (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) connected to the Internet. It also incorporates a block of connection and disconnection of the electrical service that would leave the whole house without service. Two functionalities are used to present the data, one is local on the LCD display of the equipment installed in the home (user) and the second is remote access to a website (server). The results show that in comparison with a standard voltage device it presents an error of 0.28% and 4.12% in current. In this way, the use of this prototype for real-time monitoring of electricity consumption is validated, since it works similarly to a conventional one. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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Effects of immersive virtual reality on the heart rate of athlete’s warm-up

2019 , Varela Aldas, José , Palacios-Navarro G. , García-Magariño I. , Fuentes E.M.

An adequate warm-up prior to intensive exercise can bring benefits to athletes, these requirements may vary depending on the physical activity and the training needs. The immersive virtual reality could have benefits in the warm-up and it can be determined by physiological data of the athlete. This work presents a mobile virtual reality application to stimulate the warm-up of an athlete using a standard treadmill, where the developed application is composed of a pleasant and stimulating environment. A Smartphone and the Gear VR are used as an HMD device, and wireless headphones are placed in the users, in addition, the heart rate of the athletes is monitored using a Polar H7 sensor. Experimental results are obtained in athletes with similar characteristics and conditions, identified a direct relation of the virtual environment with the pulsations per minute (ppm), denoting pulsations greater than usual in case of the stimulating environment and lower pulsations for the pleasant environment. Finally, a usability test is performed that shows the level of sociability of the system. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019.

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Monitoring System for Plants Based on a Smart Plant Pot

2022 , Salazar M. , Castillo F. , Andaluz V.H. , Palacios-Navarro G. , Varela Aldas, José

The occupations of the modern world neglect important things like the environment and sustainable development. This work develops a monitoring system for plants, based on a smart plant pot that can be supervised and configured through a mobile application. The electronic design consists of the use of two sensors that constantly send the temperature and humidity of the plant to the mobile application. In addition, a submersible pump provides water to the interior of the plant pot to monitor the condition of the plant. The optimal temperature and humidity settings will depend on the type of plant; these options can be configured remotely. Alerts are sent in the form of notifications or appear on the display of the plant pot when a different status than recommended is detected. Information is reflected locally on the plant pot display as facial expressions. The local operating code is designed so that the facial expression displayed on the screen changes automatically based on the conditions presented on the plant pot. As a result, adequate communication was obtained between the mobile application and all the devices installed in the smart plant pot. Finally, an acceptance test is applied that qualifies this proposal as suitable for domestic use. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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Fog computing for assisting and tracking elder patients with neurodegenerative diseases

2019 , García-Magariño I. , Varela Aldas, José , Palacios-Navarro G. , Lloret J.

U.S. hospitals transmit and manage great amounts of information with the avenue of Internet of things. This work departs from a real need detected by healthcare centers and hospitals in U.S., Spain and Ecuador. This work focuses on the application of fog computing for obtaining an app rich in visual content that will not overload U.S. hospital infrastructures even if it was used massively. The simulation results showed that the proposed fog-based approach could support a regular use (one day out of three on average) by 1% of patients of one of the most common neurodegenerative diseases in 14 states in U.S (i.e. 36,400 patients in total) with only a traffic of 528 KB per day on average when using one hospital per state. © 2019, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.

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Virtual Reality applications based on activities of daily living (ADL) for cognitive diagnosis and rehabilitation

2022 , Buele, Jorge , Varela Aldas, José , Palacios-Navarro G.

Traditionally, screening tools are available to help diagnose a person's cognitive problem. Therefore, rehabilitation techniques are lab exercises that lack adequate ecological validity. In this paper, we propose to establish the projection of a methodology for the development of serious games based on activities of daily living (ADL). Both for real and immersive environments, to assess what provides better results when applied in healthy patients at first, but with a focus on those suffering from Alzheimer's disease. It is expected that when this research is completed, precedents will be established for the development of new proposals based on virtual environments. © 2022 IEEE.

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Pet Access Control System Using a Mobile Application

2022 , Cuzme C. , Miranda M. , Andaluz V.H. , Palacios-Navarro G. , Varela Aldas, José

This work develops a system consisting of a mobile application and an automatic gate implemented with low-cost technology. The devices are linked to a cloud server through the internet. The design of the system consists of a gate that incorporates a motion sensor to detect the pet, for this a passive infrared sensor is used. The electronic circuit of the gate is based on the ESP32 board. This device sends notifications to monitor when the pet approaches this area. The system consists of two modes, manual and automatic. In manual mode, the user decides to open the gate or not, while in automatic mode the gate opens whenever it detects the pet. On the other hand, the mobile application has been designed to control the operating mode. The application's user interface presents a warning when the presence of the pet is detected and allows the gate to be activated remotely only when it is in manual mode. The cloud platform used is Firebase, this remote database records the latest states of the fields shared by both devices. 3 pets were tested for 1 week to ensure continued system performance. As a result, adequate communication was obtained between the elements installed in the gate and the mobile application. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

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