Special Issue Agriculture Electrical and Electronic Engineering Food Sciences Information Sciences

Wildlife Approach Detection Using a Custom-Built Multimodal IoT Camera System with Environmental Sound Analysis

This paper presents a custom-built IoT camera system designed for recognizing wild animal approaches, where data transmission and power consumption are critical concerns in resource-constrained outdoor settings. The proposed method involves the spectral analysis on both infrared and environmental sound data before uploading images and videos to the remote server. Experiments, including battery endurance tests and wildlife monitoring, were conducted to validate the system. These results showed that the system minimized false positives caused by environmental factors such as wind or vegetation movement. Importantly, adding frequency features from audio waveforms that capture sounds including wind noise and footsteps led to an improvement in detection accuracy, which increased the AUC from 0.894 to 0.990 in Random Forest (RF) and from 0.900 with infrared sensor data alone to 0.987 in Logistic Regression (LR). These findings contribute to applications in wildlife conservation, agricultural protection, and ecosystem monitoring.

View more >>

Special Issue Engineering in General Information Sciences Others

A Study on the Development of a Traffic Volume Counting Method by Vehicle Type and Direction Using Deep Learning

The turning movement count is investigated to understand the traffic conditions at intersections and identify bottleneck locations. In recent years, methods utilizing probe data and AI-based analysis of video images have been developed to streamline the survey process. Existing methods can count vehicles as they pass but struggle to classify vehicle types. Therefore, the objective of this study is to develop a method for counting turning movement count by vehicle type using deep learning. In this method, YOLOv8 is used to detect cars, buses, and trucks in video images, and BoT-SORT is used for tracking. When a vehicle being tracked crosses the cross-sectional lines and auxiliary lines at the intersection captured in the video images, it is counted by class. In this case, the entry direction of vehicles that cannot be determined upon entering the intersection is estimated based on accurately counted vehicles. Additionally, the entry direction is inferred from a series of vector information within the detection bounding boxes. The results of the verification experiment showed that the proposed method can count the directional traffic volume with an accuracy of over 95.0% and classify the three vehicle classes—car, bus, and truck—with an accuracy of over 90.0%.

View more >>

Special Issue Engineering in General Information Sciences Others

Detecting Near-Miss Actions and Estimating Physical Fatigue among Construction Workers Using Wearable Sensors

Labor shortages in the construction industry have become a serious issue in developed countries, particularly in Japan, where workforce aging and declining recruitment of young workers are significant challenges. In this context, ensuring worker safety has become increasingly critical. While occupational accidents in Japan's construction industry have decreased annually due to proper safety measures, the construction industry still has the highest number of fatalities among all industries. Falls from height and falls on the same level are the leading causes of injuries and fatalities. Therefore, detecting near-miss incidents (such as tripping and slipping) that precede falls, along with physical fatigue, could help prevent occupational accidents. This study investigated the feasibility of detecting near-miss incidents and estimating fatigue levels using wearable sensors suitable for continuous monitoring at construction sites. We conducted validation experiments simulating near-miss actions and fatigue conditions. Results showed that applying a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) to data collected from an iPhone® placed in workers' trouser pockets achieved an F1-score of 0.95 in detecting near-miss actions. Additionally, by comparing body sway magnitudes before and after fatigue, we confirmed the potential for estimating physical fatigue.

View more >>

Special Issue Information Sciences

Fundamental Study on Detection of Dangerous Objects on the Road Surface Leading to Motorcycle Accidents Using a 360-Degree Camera

In recent years, the number of fatalities in traffic accidents involving motorcyclists has remained almost unchanged, with single-vehicle accidents accounting for 37.2% of all accidents by accident type in the past five years. In the development of overturn prevention devices for motorcycles, problems remain in post-mounting of the device as well as its downsizing. On the other hand, an existing study using deep learning has proposed a method for detecting dangerous objects on the road surface leading motorcycles to overturn, though this method still needs verification under different conditions. In this study, we apply a method for detecting dangerous objects on the road surface from video images using YOLO to two types of 360-degree cameras and verify that this method is versatile under different conditions.

View more >>

Article Engineering in General

Evaluation of Revitalization Measures for Central City Areas Considering Changes in Human Flows

In recent years, a declining population and an aging and decline have led to a reduction in the vibrancy and economic activity of the city. Various regional cities have taken measures to revitalize their central city areas. However, they have yet to develop a method to quantify the effects of these measures. In this study, using a device equipped with Internet of Things (IoT), we obtained basic data on the number of visitors before the COVID-19 to quantify pedestrian traffic along Kokusai Street. Our findings revealed that the implementation of revitalization strategies led to a notable increase in the number of individuals visiting the area, as well as in the average duration of their stay. This suggests that the implemented measures have the potential to contribute to the revitalization of the area, thereby fostering the creation of a vibrant town center.

View more >>

Article Education Information Sciences Psychology and Education

An Inquiry-Based Learning Support System for Children in Sports Acquisition Processes

This study examined an inquiry-based learning support system for children in sports acquisition processes and describes the characteristics of a case study on the long-term collaborative process of children’s forward and backward cycle practices on horizontal bars. We analyzed 18 horizontal-bar practices for two elementary schoolchildren who had not succeeded in their backward cycle for approximately half a year. They were required to make practice plans collaboratively to succeed in their forward and backward cycles. To support their practices, we provided them with “HDMi (HDMi is the name of a system we developed in the past.),” which was developed to support reflecting on one’s physical movements using movies. The movies were also used for discourse analysis to determine where the children focused, and OpenPose software was used for motion analysis to examine how the children’s actions improved on a horizontal bar. Both the HDMi and the discourse analysis suggested that two children selected their focusing points for their practice and they gradually became referring to “move toes toward opposite side of the bar” in the periods of practices. However, the motion analysis revealed that the focused points and actual movement of the body did not match completely.

View more >>

Article Education Interdisciplinary Sciences Psychology

Review matching task to diagnose basic review ability

Software development begins with writing a requirement definition document (RDD) specifying what software is to be built, and the RDD should define the necessary and sufficient conditions the software must satisfy. Preferably, the RDD is reviewed to guarantee its quality. However, the quality of reviews of such documents is not easy to evaluate, due to various review styles and the logical complexity of RDDs. Therefore, we regarded the review ability as the ability to match an RDD with a software and developed a game to make a matching task that can assess review quality. The task has four types of relationships, two-by-two classes of necessity (i.e., the RDD has no irrelevant sentences to define the given software) and sufficiency (i.e., the RDD covers all the parts of the software), between requirements and software, which are expressed in verbal and nonverbal forms. Results suggest that the game likely sufficiently simulated the process of making/reviewing RDD in the requirement definition process. Therefore, it is suggested that the matching task created through the game can be adequate to assess the review ability.

View more >>

Special Issue Environmental Sciences Psychology and Education Sociology

The Effects of Positive and Negative Ions on esports Performance and Arousal Levels Part 2 -Testing Higher Ion Density-

The purpose of this study was to investigate the psychological effects of higher positive and negative ion conditions on the arousal levels of esports players during a racing game. Participants (10 males) from a collegiate esports team were the participants in the study. The effects of higher concentrations of positive and negative ions were evaluated in a randomized crossover. Each participant performed two experiments four weeks apart; two experimental environments were used: positive and negative ions filling the atmosphere (PNI) condition and a control (CON) condition. A car racing game was employed as the performance task. Arousal was measured by the two-dimensional mood scale (TDMS) and electroencephalogram (EEG). EEG was used to measure arousal. The results showed that the level of arousal in the subjective assessment and the level of arousal in the EEG were significantly higher in the CON condition for PNI. In addition, PNI performed significantly better on the game task than in the CON condition. The present study demonstrated in positive and negative ion environments with higher concentrations than in the previous study, and the results showed higher arousal levels in subjective assessments, indicating that higher concentrations of ionic environments are beneficial for esports players.

View more >>

Special Issue Information Sciences

Development of Video Switching System in Sport Fields

In Japan, the Sport Basic Plan was formulated in 2012, which mentions not only the development of highly qualified sports instructors but also new perspectives such as the provision of programs in which everyone can enjoy the value of sports together. Against this background, trials of new technologies utilizing the latest ICT equipment such as sensor devices are being made. However, in college sports, where financial resources are often limited, shooting with hand-held video cameras is the most common method, which may cause the manager to overlook important scenes of play depending on his or her skill level. This problem affects not only competitors but also spectators. To solve this problem, we develop a system for capturing video images of the entire field with multiple fixed video cameras so that the system can automatically switch from one to another video of the most appropriate camera for the respective scenes of play. The results of the demonstration experiments in basketball and futsal showed that the switching video of the proposed technology can be utilized for tactical analysis in sports.

View more >>

Secondary Publication Engineering in General Information Sciences

An e-Management Method and Self-Driving Frame of on-Demand-to-Supply Robot Type using Ternary/Pair-Map

Our study on 3M&I-artifacts body looks at the (intangible) problems from the traditional Taylor-style static to dynamic (cock-pit) e-management approaches. Since the invention of pair-map (1983) at profit max, we are attempting to advance the on (moving-space)-management by pair (accelerator, brake) matrix approach. This attempt could be now characterized as the problem of profit max by pair (revenue, cost) method, and would be visualized and digitalized such as such a heliocentric vs. geocentric science as mobile “enterprise x computer” robots of SW (middle initiative) base. Finally, a static vs. moving-space automobile-like case on the pair-typed driving map is graphically given and discussed toward the shedding of classic pair-map at 2-center type since 1983.

View more >>