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    Indoor localization utilizing existing infrastructure in smart homes : a thesis by publications presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computer and Electronics Engineering, Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2019) Konings, Daniel
    Indoor positioning system (IPS) have received significant interest from the research community over the past decade. However, this has not eventuated into widespread adoption of IPS and few commercial solutions exist. Integration into Smart Homes could allow for secondary services including location-based services, targeted user experiences and intrusion detection, to be enabled using the existing underlying infrastructure. Since New Zealand has an aging population, we must ensure that the elderly are well looked after. An IPS solution could detect whether a person has been immobile for an extended period and alert medical personnel. A major shortcoming of existing IPS is their reliance on end-users to undertake a significant infrastructure investment to facilitate the localization tasks. An IPS that does not require extensive installation and calibration procedures, could potentially see significant uptake from end users. In order to expedite the widespread adoption of IPS technology, this thesis focuses on four major areas of improvement, namely: infrastructure reuse, reduced node density, algorithm improvement and reduced end user calibration requirements. The work presented demonstrates the feasibility of utilizing existing wireless and lighting infrastructure for positioning and implements novel spring-relaxation and potential fields-based localization approaches that allow for robust target tracking, with minimal calibration requirements. The developed novel localization algorithms are benchmarked against the existing state of the art and show superior performance.
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    Speech driven user interface for an intelligent house : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Information Engineering at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2005) Liu, Zhenqing
    Speech driven user interface for an intelligent house is one of a number of Graduate research projects at Massey University. It is part of Project 'Smart House'. This thesis details development of a control system whose inputs are speech signal rather than manual. The control system consists of several sub-systems including speech recognition, command generation, signal transmission, signal reception and command manipulation. The completed speech driven user interface should operate in conjunction with Real-time implementation of a Microphone Array beam-former and Personal identity recognition that were developed concurrently with this project. The speech recognition and command generation subsystems are implemented on a PC whereas the signal transmission, signal reception and command manipulation subsystems are designed at embedded board level. The remote controller can control some electrical appliances, such as TV and CD player, and switch and dim the light.
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    The Smart House Intelligent Management System : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Information Engineering at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2004) Lomiwes, Grettle Rayn
    In October 2002, Massey University embarked on the Smart House Project. It was intended to be a test bed of different technologies that improve the safety and quality of life within the home. This thesis presents the design and current status of the Smart House Intelligent Management System, a management system for processing the commands received in the Massey University Smart House. There will be two parts to this Management System: an Expert System which will be responsible for the supervision of the house, its rules and its devices, as well as a conversation module which will converse with the occupant/s of the Smart House. The system will receive voice or text commands from the user as input and process the information through performing database queries about the received command, to ascertain whether it is valid. Validity is dependent on the command's adhering to house rules, which have been set by the user beforehand. This Management System will communicate with three other modules: the Bluetooth Smart Watch, the Speech Recognition/Generation System and the Ethernet Switching System, which enables access to the house devices.
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    Remote control of devices using an 8-bit embedded XML & dynamic web-server in a SmartHouse environment : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Computer Systems Engineering at Massey University
    (Massey University, 2006) Kok, Albert Leon
    This paper focuses on an Embedded System known as "TCP/IC" and its role in the "house of the future" - the SmartHouse. Overall, the aim of the TCP/IC was to design a device which could interact with a user (or AI control system) and allow for the control of various attached peripherals remotely. Although such a device could well be used as a standalone device to aid in home-automation, this paper focuses on its use in a SmartHouse environment - one where a number of these devices are networked and controlled by a central AI. The different technologies and protocols involved in the implementation of the TCP/IC, along with its two primary interfaces, namely HTML (used for user interaction) and XML (used for machine interaction) are also discussed. The reader will also be introduced to Embedded Systems and the various design principles involved in the creation of quality Embedded Systems. Core-concepts of home-automation and its logical extension, the SmartHouse are also covered in detail. Various additional interfaces (e.g. Web, XML, custom-formatted text) are also discussed and compared, as are the result of my work and some ideas for future implementations.
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    Design and implementation of Internet of Things for home environment : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Electronics and Computer Systems Engineering at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2013) Kelly, Sean
    An integrated framework for smart home monitoring towards internet of things based on ZigBee and 6LoWPAN wireless sensor networks is presented. The system was developed to retrofit existing sub systems of wireless technologies in order to reduce cost, and complexity. The practical internetworking architecture and the connection procedures for reliable measurement of smart sensors parameters and transmission of sensing data via internet are presented. A ZigBee based sensing system was designed and developed to see the feasibility of the system in home automation for contextual environmental monitoring. The ubiquitous sensing system is based on combination of pervasive distributed sensing units and an information system for data aggregation and analysis. Results related to the home automation parameters and execution of the system running continuously for long durations is encouraging. The prototype system (ZigBee based) was tested to generate real-time graphical information rather than using a simulator or a test bed scenario. A trail has also been performed with 6LoWPAN technology to provide functionality as the ZigBee based system. The overall internetworking architecture describes the integration of a low power consumption wireless sensor network with the internet. The proposed prototype has advantages in terms of low cost, flexibility of usage. The design of the integrated framework provides a template for other applications related to the Internet of Things.
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    Behaviour recognition in smart homes : a dissertation presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computer Science at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2012) Chua, Sook-Ling
    In the context of this thesis, behaviour recognition aims to infer the particular behaviours of the inhabitant of a smart home from a series of sensor readings from around the house. This thesis views the behaviour recognition problem as a task of mapping the sensory outputs to a sequence of activities performed by the inhabitant. The main focus is the development of machine learning methods to find an approximation to the mapping between sensor outputs and behaviours. While there have been many supervised machine learning methods for identifying behaviours from a sensor stream, they generally assume that the behaviours are either segmented or perform segmentation and behaviour recognition separately. In order to be used in the real world, segmentation and behaviour recognition should not be treated separately. This thesis addresses this problem based on a set of hidden Markov models (HMM) and a variable window length. As the majority of the methods reported in the literature are based on supervised learning approach, they generally rely on a labelled dataset, where the behaviours of the inhabitant have to be manually labelled. This is often not practical in the real world. Most current unsupervised methods are not suitable for behaviour recognition as they are based on inputs of xed dimensionality. In the smart home, the behaviours that are to be recognised are variable in length. This thesis introduces an unsupervised learning method that addresses this problem, which is based on compression and the edit distance between words. This includes both the segmentation of the sensor stream into suitable patterns and identi cation of patterns that correspond to human behaviours. This thesis also shows that the resulting method can be used to provide labels to training data for a supervised method. However, training a learning algorithm on sensors that are irrelevant and/or redundant becomes crucial as they may a ect the recognition performance. This thesis addresses the sensor selection problem for behaviour recognition through an information-theoretic approach, which is based on information gain, modelled in the form of a decision tree. The main idea is to identify the set of informative sensors that are highly correlated with the behaviours. This thesis also presents solutions to address the `generalisation' issues of the informative sensors identified across the different trees. To evaluate the e ectiveness of our proposed methods, we use a real smart home dataset obtained from the MIT PlaceLab and compare the labels produced by our methods with the labels assigned by a human to the activities in the sensor stream. We also validated our methods on other benchmark datasets and learning algorithms.
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    Modular design and implementation of a low cost home automation system using web-services : a thesis presented in partial fulfilement [i.e. fulfilment] of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering in Computer Systems at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2011) Gomasa, Sunny Peter
    The idea of home automation has existed and worked on by several researchers. The idea of controlling devices, around a home, in way to provide improved comfort and security has been in the way since early 19th century. Current advancements in computing and communication technology allow for designing smart home automation systems that can manage several devices from one central location. Several researchers have been working in designing one that can manage, maintain and process data with very little user interaction. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to design and implement a low-cost home automation system that is independent of networking protocol, is scalable and easy to deploy & maintain. The system works as several modules operating independently while coordinating with a central gateway. Zigbee protocol was used provided wireless communication to devices that require low-power and not a whole lot of computing. Lastly a discussion was made to use Open-source software to keep cost to minimum.
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    Wireless sensor network based smart home for elder care : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Electronics Engineering at School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, Massey University, Manawatu Campus, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2011) Gaddam, Anuroop
    The proportion of elderly people in any population is growing rapidly creating the need to increase geriatric care and this trend isn’t going to change in the near future. In New Zealand, the median age of the population is projected to rise from 36.6 in 2010 to 43.1 in 2050. This will put tremendous strain on national resources and the cost of elder care is only going to escalate. More and more elderly people are choosing to stay alone, independently, rather than in a retirement village or old people’s home. Such people, often frail and infirm, do however require constant monitoring so that medical help can be provided immediately in times of dire needs. Considerable research efforts have been focused towards in-home monitoring of elderly people, often using wireless personal area networks. As wireless sensing technology continues to evolve, it is playing an important role in improving the quality of life for elderly people and their families. Wireless sensors based smart home monitoring system provides a safe, sound and secure living environment for the elderly people. A wireless sensors based smart home consists of number of wireless sensors that provide information. The information from the sensors can be used for monitoring elderly people by detecting their abnormal patterns in their daily activities and picking up any unforeseen abnormal condition when occurs. The thesis is focused on research and developmental issues of an intelligent wireless sensors based smart home and determination of person’s daily activities based on the usage of different appliances. The daily pattern can then be compared to determine the early signs of behavioural pattern change of elderly, which can potentially allow for early medical intervention. While several sensors are readily available off the shelf, making them “intelligent” in the context of a specific application (such as monitoring of the elderly) is always a challenging task. We have developed a framework, dealing with the design intricacies and implementation issues of novel sensors, targeted to achieve a Digital Home specifically for the elderly. This smart home monitoring may circumvent institutionalizing the older persons and can help them live at home in safety and independence. The design methodology is on the impediments in designing, implementing and testing a wireless sensor network based smart home for monitoring the elderly and to propose an optimal solution to circumvent the impediments. The smart home is based on a few smart and iii intelligent sensors, which are developed, fabricated and configured around a wireless ad-hoc network. The system will generate early warning message to care giver, when an unforeseen abnormal condition occurs. It will also, analyse gathered data to determine resident behaviour using optimal number of intelligent sensors. In general terms intelligent sensors, i.e., sensing devices having intelligent aspects, can be considered as an extension of conventional sensors with advanced learning and adaptation capabilities. The developed monitoring system is used to recognize activities of daily living and life style of elderly person living alone. Even though the monitoring system uses a limited number of sensors, it determines the daily behaviour of the person. The system was installed in residential environments with ease. Moreover, the proposed sensing system presents an alternative to sensors that are perceived by most people as invasive such as cameras and microphones, making the sensors are almost invisible to the user thereby increasing the acceptance level to use the system in a household environment. The results obtained from this research demonstrate the feasibility to build a system based on wireless sensors, to identify, and possible to distinguish between normal and abnormal situation of an elderly person living alone in a home.
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    ZigBee-based system for remote monitoring and control of switches : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2010) Lyon, Matthew
    Home automation technology has existed for nearly four decades, but is nonetheless mostly absent in the average home today. The systems that do exist are often highly customised and expensive, catering to a very niche market, or overly sophisticated and complicated. Many of these also require extensive, dedicated cabling as their communications backbone and as such are only practical to install during the construction of a new house. The core aims of this project are to develop a cheap and simple home automation system that can be easily installed in new and existing houses. These aims are achieved by creating a centralised system where most of the intelligence is managed by a PC server and the end nodes are kept as simple as possible. The server is responsible for basic security, maintaining awareness of the current system state and providing the user interface. At the outer edge of the system is a ZigBee network of wall switches and, in between, a home gateway provides a protocol translation service between the two. The new, “smart” switches are designed to be entirely compatible with existing wall switches in terms of their mounting and wiring requirements, and so ZigBee is chosen to provide a reliable wireless communication channel between the end nodes and the gateway. Development of the system is undertaken in three stages; design of the server software (including the user interface and server processes), design of the home gateway embedded software, and design of the hardware and embedded software of the switches. The end result is an effective, entry-level system that provides the benefits of remote management without the need for a costly or complex infrastructure.