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CHIPS: Cycle Highways Innovation for smarter People Transport and Spatial Planning

The livability of the cities and attractiveness of our environment can be improved by smarter choices for mobility products and travel modes. A change from current car-dependent lifestyles towards the use of healthier and less polluted transport modes, such as cycling, is needed. With awareness campaigns, cycling facilities and cycle infrastructure, the use of the bicycle will be stimulated. But which campaigns are effective? Can we stimulate cycling by adding cycling facilities along the cycle path? How can we design the best cycle infrastructure for a region? And what impact does good cycle infrastructure have on the increase of cycling?To find answers for these questions and come up with a future approach to stimulate bicycle use, BUas is participating in the InterReg V NWE-project CHIPS; Cycle Highways Innovation for smarter People transport and Spatial planning. Together with the city of Tilburg and other partners from The Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and United Kingdom we explore and demonstrate infrastructural improvements and tackle crucial elements related to engaging users and successful promotion of cycle highways. BUas is responsible for the monitoring and evaluation of the project. To measure the impact and effectiveness of cycle highway innovations we use Cyclespex and Cycleprint.With Cyclespex a virtual living lab is created which we will use to test several readability and wayfinding measures for cycle infrastructure. Cyclespex gives us the opportunity to test different scenario’s in virtual reality that will help us to make decisions about the final solution that will be realized on the cycle highway. Cycleprint will be used to develop a monitoring dashboard where municipalities of cities can easily monitor and evaluate the local bicycle use.

Community of Practice for a Healthy Lifestyle

DIAMOND2

Over a million people in the Netherlands have type 2 diabetes (T2D), which is strongly related to overweight, and many more people are at-risk. A carbohydrate-rich diet and insufficient physical activity play a crucial role in these developments. It is essential to prevent T2D, because this condition is associated with a reduced quality of life, high healthcare costs and premature death due to cardiovascular diseases. The hormone insulin plays a major role in this. This hormone lowers the blood glucose concentration through uptake in body cells. If an excess of glucose is constantly offered, initially the body maintains blood glucose concentration within normal range by releasing higher concentrations of insulin into the blood, a condition that is described as “prediabetes”. In a process of several years, this compensating mechanism will eventually fail: the blood glucose concentration increases resulting in T2D. In the current healthcare practice, T2D is actually diagnosed by recognizing only elevated blood glucose concentrations, being insufficient for identification of people who have prediabetes and are at-risk to develop T2D. Although the increased insulin concentrations at normal glucose concentrations offer an opportunity for early identification/screening of people with prediabetes, there is a lack of effective and reliable methods/devices to adequately measure insulin concentrations. An integrated approach has been chosen for identification of people at-risk by using a prediabetes screening method based on insulin detection. Users and other stakeholders will be involved in the development and implementation process from the start of the project. A portable and easy-to-use demonstrator will be realised, based on rapid lateral flow tests (LFTs), which is able to measure insulin in clinically relevant samples (serum/blood) quickly and reliably. Furthermore, in collaboration with healthcare professionals, we will investigate how this screening method can be implemented in practice to contribute to a healthier lifestyle and prevent T2D.

drivEr trainIng anD assEssmenT: a dIgital approaCh (EIDETIC)

Receiving the first “Rijbewijs” is always an exciting moment for any teenager, but, this also comes with considerable risks. In the Netherlands, the fatality rate of young novice drivers is five times higher than that of drivers between the ages of 30 and 59 years. These risks are mainly because of age-related factors and lack of experience which manifests in inadequate higher-order skills required for hazard perception and successful interventions to react to risks on the road. Although risk assessment and driving attitude is included in the drivers’ training and examination process, the accident statistics show that it only has limited influence on the development factors such as attitudes, motivations, lifestyles, self-assessment and risk acceptance that play a significant role in post-licensing driving. This negatively impacts traffic safety. “How could novice drivers receive critical feedback on their driving behaviour and traffic safety? ” is, therefore, an important question. Due to major advancements in domains such as ICT, sensors, big data, and Artificial Intelligence (AI), in-vehicle data is being extensively used for monitoring driver behaviour, driving style identification and driver modelling. However, use of such techniques in pre-license driver training and assessment has not been extensively explored. EIDETIC aims at developing a novel approach by fusing multiple data sources such as in-vehicle sensors/data (to trace the vehicle trajectory), eye-tracking glasses (to monitor viewing behaviour) and cameras (to monitor the surroundings) for providing quantifiable and understandable feedback to novice drivers. Furthermore, this new knowledge could also support driving instructors and examiners in ensuring safe drivers. This project will also generate necessary knowledge that would serve as a foundation for facilitating the transition to the training and assessment for drivers of automated vehicles.

European Bachelor in Physical Activity and Lifestyle Counselling (co-financed by the European Union Project Number: 510029-LLP-1-NL-ERASMUS-ECDSP Programme: Lifelong learning programme Sub-programme: Erasmus)

Facial Scanning Pipeline (Epic Megagrants)

In this project, the AGM R&D team developed and refined the use of a facial scanning rig. The rig is a physical device comprising multiple cameras and lighting that are mounted on scaffolding around a 'scanning volume'. This is an area at which objects are placed before being photographed from multiple angles. The object is typically a person's head, but it can be anything of this approximate size. Software compares the photographs to create a digital 3D recreation - this process is called photogrammetry. The 3D model is then processed by further pieces of software and eventually becomes a face that can be animated inside in Unreal Engine, which is a popular piece of game development software made by the company Epic. This project was funded by Epic's 'Megagrant' system, and the focus of the work is on streamlining and automating the processing pipeline, and on improving the quality of the resulting output. Additional work has been done on skin shaders (simulating the quality of real skin in a digital form) and the use of AI to re/create lifelike hair styles. The R&D work has produced significant savings in regards to the processing time and the quality of facial scans, has produced a system that has benefitted the educational offering of BUas, and has attracted collaborators from the commercial entertainment/simulation industries. This work complements and extends previous work done on the VIBE project, where the focus was on creating lifelike human avatars for the medical industry.