Papers by Vladimir Robles-Bykbaev
A Smart Mirror Based on Computer Vision and Deep Learning to Support the Learning of Sexual Violence Prevention and Self-care Health in Youth with Intellectual Disabilities
Lecture notes in networks and systems, 2023
Intelligent System to Provide Support in the Analysis of Colposcopy Images Based on Artificial Vision and Deep Learning: A First Approach for Rural Environments in Ecuador
Lecture notes in networks and systems, 2023
An interactive application based on augmented reality and rules-based reasoning to support educational activities of high school students
According to the latest estimates of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Orga... more According to the latest estimates of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), in 2017, more than 617 million children and adolescents were not achieving minimum proficiency levels regarding reading and mathematics. In this line, it is essential for children and youth developing mainstays for solving problems and adequately understanding the information around them. These mainstays are strongly related to logical and mathematical skills. Therefore, in this paper, we present an educational tool that uses augmented reality to provide interactive exercises for the following areas: functions, areas, volumes, angles, and the Pythagorean theorem. Similarly, our proposal incorporates a decision support system that suggests to a given student what activities and exercises must solve. The validation process of the tools was carried out with the support of 179 volunteers.
Ecuadorian Kichwa to Spanish automatic translation: an initial approximation based on LSTM Neural Networks for educational applications
According to the latest estimates of UNESCO, currently, the Kichwa is experiencing a rapid loss a... more According to the latest estimates of UNESCO, currently, the Kichwa is experiencing a rapid loss among young generations. Some studies predict that approximately half of 7000 World languages will be extinct by the end of the XXI century. For these reasons, it is fundamental to develop efforts to rescue and revitalize the indigenous languages as a fundamental part of the cultural heritage of ancient nations. In this paper, we describe an initial approximation to develop an automatic translation tool from the Ecuadorian Kichwa variant to Spanish. However, this task is challenging, because currently there are not enough digital bilingual texts (Ecuadorian Kiwcha - Spanish) to design automatic translation tools. Our proposal compared Long Short-Term Memory Neural Network (LSTM-NN) and Transformer NN as is described in state of the art. Although the initial results do not have the precision required to have a suitable translator (due to the lack of enough bilingual texts), this first approximation shows that it is feasible to use LSTM NN to continue the research and development process in this area.
An interactive educational tool based on augmented reality, mobile applications and comic strips to teach children the Cañari and Inca cultures in the Ecuadorian context
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), due o... more According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), due of the rapidity of cultural change, safeguarding the world's tangible and intangible cultural heritage has become an increasingly complex and multidimensional undertaking. Therefore, it is fundamental for the children and youth of today to learn the culture, values, and traditions that define their identity as well as the identity of their nation. For these reasons in this paper, we present an interactive app aimed at supporting both teaching and rescuing the heritage of Cañari and Inca indigenous cultures. Our mobile app can be used at children's home or during the guided visits of one of the most important museums in Ecuador: the Pumapungo Museum. Likewise, the app can identify QR codes to show multimedia material to children, contains several 3D objects that are presented using Augmented Reality (AR), and incorporates a Natural Language Processing (NLP) module to determine the children's learning progress. In this line, it is important mentioning that children use the app to create small "stories" about the learned concepts. The app was tested in real guided visits in the museum with 30 children from three different schools (low and middle -income), and the results show high levels of interest in the contents and the app.
YOCASTA: A ludic-interactive system to support the detection of anxiety and lack of concentration in children with disabilities
The World Health Organization (WHO) claims that depression and anxiety disorders cost the global ... more The World Health Organization (WHO) claims that depression and anxiety disorders cost the global economy US$1 trillion each year. Likewise, the anxiety in children can trigger different kind of educational issues such as attention difficulties, frustration, and in general, the school failure. This disorder can appear too in children with different kind of disabilities as cerebral palsy, Down syndrome, autism, etc. For these reasons, in this paper we present a ludic-interactive system that provides support to detect behaviors/traits related with anxiety or lack of concentration in children with disabilities. Our proposal provides different kinds of ludic/educational activities as well as a data mining analysis module to support decisions making for psychologists and professionals of special education. In order to determine the real feasibility of the system, we have carried out a pilot experiment with 50 children (25 without and 25 with disabilities). The results provided by the system has validated by a team of psychologists.
e-Pumapunku: An Interactive App to Teach Children the Cañari and Inca Indigenous Cultures During Guided Museum Visits
According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), due o... more According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), due of the rapidity of cultural change, safeguarding the world's tangible and intangible cultural heritage has become an increasingly complex and multidimensional undertaking. Therefore, it is fundamental for the children and youth of today to learn the culture, values, and traditions that define their identity as well as the identity of their nation. For these reasons in this paper, we present an interactive app aimed at supporting both teaching and rescuing the heritage of Cañari and Inca indigenous cultures. Our mobile app can be used at children's home or during the guided visits of one of the most important museums in Ecuador: the Pumapungo Museum. Likewise, the app can identify QR codes to show multimedia material to children, contains several 3D objects that are presented using Augmented Reality (AR), and incorporates a data mining module to analyze several aspects of the museum visitors (geographical information, feedback collected through a survey, etc.). The app was tested in real guided visits in the museum with 30 children from three different schools (low and middle -income), and the results show high levels of interest in the contents and the app.
An educational approach to generate new tools for education support of children with disabilities
In this article, we propose a new approach to generate tools (assistive technology) for supportin... more In this article, we propose a new approach to generate tools (assistive technology) for supporting education of children with disabilities in the first three levels of school. In the model proposed, we included the students of the last years of engineering careers, the experts of special education, the children with disabilities, and the teachers in charge of courses, such as:
Consensus socialization: A contribution to the assessment method center based on the use of a smartpen and the fast fourier transform
The Assessment Center (AC) is a technique applied to the human behavior linked to the organizatio... more The Assessment Center (AC) is a technique applied to the human behavior linked to the organizational environments. It is especially used for promotion, evaluation, and staff selection, allowing the identification of competences and behaviors in people who are summited in this process. The following article describes the complementarity that can be given to the AC method from the inclusion of a new face denominated by the authors as “Consensus Socialization”. The methodological variable has been applied 16 times into different organizations belonging to different areas, among them business, health, and academy. It was tested through data obtained by a pen-like device built with 3D printing techniques, and provided with electronic mechanisms, which are able to capture transferred pressure from the hand of the person handling it. The data analysis uses the Fourier Transform, and allows the projection of graphs that correlate the organizational physiology analysis with respect to the pressure provided by the device, not only for the regular faces, but also for the new intervention. Through this, it has been proved that this variant provides objective data, especially when auto-control or stress tolerance competence is assessed with AC.
An educational platform based on expert systems, speech recognition, and ludic activities to support the lexical and semantic development in children from 2 to 3 years
The language and communication are considered mainstays of cognitive, psychological and emotional... more The language and communication are considered mainstays of cognitive, psychological and emotional development of children. Commonly, during the first four years of life, children make significant progress in learning the language. However, in some cases, there arise delays or differences in patterns of language acquisition, aspects that constitute warnings of developmental problems. For these reasons, in this paper, we describe an educational platform (Pike-Aprende) aimed at supporting the following aspects: a) planning, monitoring, and intervention activities in children (carried out by teachers and Speech and Language Therapists, SLTs), b) automatic design of therapy/stimulation plans for children, and c) supporting the analysis/discrimination of utterances produced by children during sessions. To this aim, we developed a set of tools for web and mobile devices, an expert system for recommending exercises and activities (based on the patient’s profile). With the aim of determining the real feasibility of our proposal, we validated the platform with the support of experts in the initial education program. The experts used the system while developed therapy and stimulation sessions with children. The results show significant progress in several participants (in comparison to traditional therapy).
An expert system to support the provisioning of staff with disabilities in industry
The World Health Organization (WHO) claims that currently in developing countries, 80% to 90% of ... more The World Health Organization (WHO) claims that currently in developing countries, 80% to 90% of persons with disabilities of working age are unemployed, whereas in industrialized countries the estimation points values between 50% and 70%. In developing countries, it is common employing persons with disabilities only with the aim of complying the state regulations. These persons commonly perform tasks for which they are overqualified. For these reasons, in this paper, we present a prototype of an expert system to support the provisioning of staff with disabilities. Our proposal considers the following elements to provide support in decision making: a set of the most common positions in the industry, the skills required to cover these positions, the disabilities with higher prevalence, and the complex relations among these elements. The prototype system has been validated with the support of a team of experts and has achieved excellent results (more than 78% of precision).
ITaCaS: a serious game and an expert system to support the teaching of sexual-health and hygiene for youth with intellectual disability
In Ecuador, according to the National Council for Disability Equality (CONADIS, acronym in Spanis... more In Ecuador, according to the National Council for Disability Equality (CONADIS, acronym in Spanish) there are 485,325 people with disabilities, being the intellectual disability the one with the highest incidence, with a prevalence of 108,312 people. In developing countries, there are still insufficient resources for teaching Sexual Health and Hygiene (SHH) to people with disabilities. Thus, it is essential to apply strategies that help teenagers with intellectual disabilities to learn about sexual health and self-care. Therefore, this article presents an educational game and an expert system called “I take care of myself” (ITaCaS) which aims to assist in the teaching of the SHH for young people with intellectual disabilities, with ages between 12 and 17 years old. The expert system helps to determine educational activities to be carried out by the teacher with the teenager, based on their profile and prior knowledge of 13 SHH educational topics. The pictures of the game were specially designed for disabled people. The proposal was validated through a study that was carried out in two special education centers with 30 experts in the field of special education. The obtained results are encouraging since they show great acceptance by the participants of this experiment.
Rating Pre-writing Skills in Ecuadorian Children: A Preliminary Study Based on Transfer Learning, Hyperparameter Tuning, and Deep Learning
Lecture notes in networks and systems, 2023
An educational environment based on stuffed toy robots, mobile apps, and expert systems to provide support in the early development of children
According to the UNESCO, the sensitive periods in early brain development occur during the first ... more According to the UNESCO, the sensitive periods in early brain development occur during the first seven years of children lives. The most relevant areas related to childhood development are the numbers, vision, emotional control, peer social skills, hearing, habitual ways of responding, symbols, and language. For this important reason, in this paper, we present an educational environment aimed at providing a set of tools to contribute to early stimulation of children assisting to low and middle-income schools. Our system relies on mobile apps and stuffed toy robots able to interact with children and other robots to teach several concepts related to early development in both, individual intervention sessions, and group sessions. This tool incorporates a rule-based reasoning expert system to select intervention strategies better. To validate our proposal, we worked with 47 children and a team of experts in the early education area.
An Intelligent Pen to Assess Anxiety Levels Through Pressure Sensors and Fuzzy Logic
Advances in intelligent systems and computing, Jun 14, 2017
Anxiety is a physiological state of activation, which is commonly measured using direct or indire... more Anxiety is a physiological state of activation, which is commonly measured using direct or indirect methods. In psychology, the tools used to obtain information about the state of anxiety in a subject are commonly, self-reports, which represent how the person perceives his or her own physiological and cognitive state of anxiety. Additionally, anxiety has been tested on graphics tests, which evaluate the characteristics of strokes, such as the pressure exerted by the pen or the oscillation of the line. These characteristics are measured in an indirect and, in certain way, subjective manner; thus it is necessary to develop objective tools that throw specific and directly measurable data. For these reasons in this paper, we present an intelligent pen that has the objective of providing a presumptive diagnosis of anxiety levels that presents a person (especially students of middle and higher education). The pen uses an electronic device to measure two pressure levels (at pen tip and pen body) and an inference system based on fuzzy logic. This prototype has been tested with 9 volunteers in an experiment consisting in two stages: a first under simulated stress condition, and a second under normal writing.
Development of a Hand Rehabilitation Therapy System with Soft Robotic Glove
Advances in intelligent systems and computing, Jun 13, 2019
The major cause of problems with hand motility in adults is due to work accidents, strokes, injur... more The major cause of problems with hand motility in adults is due to work accidents, strokes, injuries and work accidents. The emergence of robotic gloves for hand rehabilitation therapy has been developed to assist with rehabilitation treatment. In this scientific paper, a robotic glove prosthesis is designed and developed for use in hand rehabilitation in patients with grip pathologies. There is talk of mechanical design and operation, and the glove is controlled by a mobile application that allows the physiotherapist to enter the settings for the patient or allow an expert system based on 15 rules to do so. The system is capable of generating reports for the patient, the physiotherapist or the caregiver to review. The developed system is portable, lightweight and easy to transport. The validation of the prototype was carried out with adult patients suffering from hemiparesis.
An interactive educational platform based on data mining and serious games to contribute to preservation and learning of the Cañari indigenous cultural heritage in Ecuador
According to latest estimates of the UNESCO between 350 and 500 million of persons that belong to... more According to latest estimates of the UNESCO between 350 and 500 million of persons that belong to indigenous peoples live currently in the world. These peoples have created and the share of the world’s almost 7000 languages. In Ecuador coexist 18 indigenous peoples, and 14 have different traditions and cosmovision. However, due to several social, cultural, and economic factors, the cultural heritage of these peoples is slowly disappearing nowadays. For these reasons, in this paper, we present an interactive platform aimed at the cultural rescue of one of the most representative indigenous people of Ecuador: the Cañaris. Our platform has the aim of providing an interactive environment where children can play educational games and access to the multimedia content of the Cañari cultural heritage. The platform includes a data mining module to automatically analyze the activity of its users to suggest and educational areas that must be reinforced. Our proposal was put to test with 30 children that speak Spanish and Kichwa and has achieved encouraging results.
Comparison of Transfer Learning vs. Hyperparameter Tuning to Improve Neural Networks Precision in the Early Detection of Pneumonia in Chest X-Rays
Lecture notes in networks and systems, 2023
EDEN Conference Proceedings
This report presents a review of the accessibility models in Learning Resources and MOOCs with th... more This report presents a review of the accessibility models in Learning Resources and MOOCs with the aim of establishing common terms in the research of the EduTech project and other projects associated with virtual accessibility in member HEIs. This study is based on the search and analysis of articles and publications related to the subject following the MLR format. The results showed a lack of applicability and data that support the current situation in Latin America, however, the experiences of European projects and regulations that support their sustainability, establish guidelines that could guide implementation processes in higher education institutions in partner countries
IEEE Access
The increasing number of people are living with disability in the World and their access to forma... more The increasing number of people are living with disability in the World and their access to formal education is considered a challenge for the development of the online education and educational resources. This problem is considered one of the 17 sustainable development goals that are focused on inclusive and equitable quality education. Nevertheless, the existing proposals for mainstream accessibility in virtual education are still complex to apply. However, the models, standards, and good practices to contribute to the virtual educational process and the design of learning for all are identified. For these reasons, in this paper, we describe an accessibility evaluation proposal based on 4 interaction domains: user analysis and interaction, intelligent systems, knowledge databases, and evaluation. In the same way, we describe a set of tools that constitute a Repository of Accessible Learning Objects (RALO) from the perspective of accessibility and adaptability metadata. In this line, the knowledge database follows the regulation and educational models focused on the students with disabilities needs and preferences from the conception of universal design. The validation of the proposal is based on the interaction study and analysis of regular and disabled students and teachers who developed the Learning Objects (LO). To determine whether there was consensus among the teacher's scores, we used Kendall's Coefficient of Concordance W.
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Papers by Vladimir Robles-Bykbaev