Nick Tyler | University College London (original) (raw)
Papers by Nick Tyler
Frontiers in Medicine
IntroductionVisual processing deficits in Alzheimer's disease are associated with diminished ... more IntroductionVisual processing deficits in Alzheimer's disease are associated with diminished functional independence. While environmental adaptations have been proposed to promote independence, recent guidance gives limited consideration to such deficits and offers conflicting recommendations for people with dementia. We evaluated the effects of clutter and color contrasts on performances of everyday actions in posterior cortical atrophy and memory-led typical Alzheimer's disease.Methods15 patients with posterior cortical atrophy, 11 with typical Alzheimer's disease and 16 healthy controls were asked to pick up a visible target object as part of two pilot repeated-measures investigations from a standing or seated position. Participants picked up the target within a controlled real-world setting under varying environmental conditions: with/without clutter, with/without color contrast cue and far/near target position. Task completion time was recorded using a target-mounte...
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2022
Throughout Europe, low floor buses are being introduced in order to extend access to more elderly... more Throughout Europe, low floor buses are being introduced in order to extend access to more elderly and disabled people. This will be encouraged in the UK by the forthcoming Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations and in Europe in general by the European Bus and Coach Directive. However, this improvement in vehicle specification does little to help people who cannot enter the bus because of deficiencies in the design of bus stops. The need expressed in the COST 322 report (to reduce the horizontal gap between the bus and the platform at a bus stop) is difficult to achieve if the driver is unable to carry out the appropriate maneuvers. The EXCALIBUR project was set up to investigate and test how infrastructure design could be specified so that both of these problems could be eased. EXCALIBUR developed and tested different designs of bus stop infrastructure in order to determine standards for construction of accessible bus stops. The designs were developed based on the outcome...
Traffic engineering and control, 1999
Once a symbol of declining rural services in the wake of rising car ownership and suburbanisation... more Once a symbol of declining rural services in the wake of rising car ownership and suburbanisation, the rural bus has been enjoying a renaissance in the UK. Nationally the Government's Rural Bus Subsidy Grant provides local authorities £60M a year to support conventional services. To complement this, last year it launched the Rural Bus Challenge, an annual competition for innovative schemes, inviting appropriate bids from councils eager to reverse years of under-funding. Last year the Challenge helped fund 46 schemes worth £11.4M, and as the Government this month begins to examine the hundreds of bids for the second Challenge, it is worth asking where all this innovation is leading. For many urban authorities the case for public transport has been as much about equality of access for all, as about efficient use of road space. But while the Challenge will clearly indirectly help disabled travellers, last year's competition included just three projects billed primarily as acces...
2017 IEEE Life Sciences Conference (LSC), Dec 1, 2017
Journal of Transport Geography, 2019
Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Engineering Sustainability, 2019
There is currently great interest in the creation of sustainable and liveable cities, both in the... more There is currently great interest in the creation of sustainable and liveable cities, both in the UK and globally. While it can be argued that good progress is being made in thinking about the needs of future cities, meeting these needs and aspirations in practice poses major challenges of understanding and measurement (what is meant by these terms and how can progress towards their achievement be measured?), complexity (cities are complex systems of systems with many interacting parts) and resilience (will interventions made today be relevant and effective in the future?). The Liveable Cities research programme created a systematic decision-making method for improving urban sustainability and liveability: the Liveable Cities Method (LCM). The LCM prioritises four criteria – individual and societal well-being, resource security, resource efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions as a proxy for environmental harm – in an interconnected framework and assesses the need for, and the resil...
Transportation Research Procedia, 2016
2015 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2015
This study aimed to examine simple locomotion and eye behaviour of individuals with Posterior Cor... more This study aimed to examine simple locomotion and eye behaviour of individuals with Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA) and typical Alzheimer's disease (tAD) within a simulated real-world environment. Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a neurodegenerative condition characterised by parietal, occipital and occipito-temporal tissue loss and progressive impairment of higher-order visual function in contrast to relatively spared memory and language. Targeted types of locomotion were walking in a series of corridors, up or down stairs, and across an open room with or without the presence of an obstacle. Eye tracking measures and inertial moment units (IMU) were used in this experiment, and resultant acceleration of left foot and fixation duration were extracted. Findings from three participants are presented as a case series: one control, one PCA and one tAD patient. The averaged resultant acceleration of PCA patient was the slowest in all types of locomotion, especially in stairs. The averaged resultant accelerations of PCA and tAD participants were slower than the control participant. The PCA participant had longer mean fixation durations than the tAD and control participants, however, mean fixation duration was similar between tAD and control participants. Results may help characterise locomotion and eye behaviour in PCA and tAD and may suggest ways to support effective diagnosis and assessment of disease progression.
Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part F: Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit, 2015
New train stock or train services are continually being added to the network in the UK. Their des... more New train stock or train services are continually being added to the network in the UK. Their design, in conjunction with European Regulations on train floor and rail height, means there is often a gap between train and platform necessitating at least one physical step. This paper presents the results from a series of experiments testing the time required to board or alight a train across three different gap heights. The experiments were designed to test for the effect of age and luggage type on the time to board or alight. As expected, more steps result in a longer time required to board or alight. More interesting is the effect of age and luggage on time to board and alight with younger people being relatively unaffected by the presence of steps and luggage, whereas both these factors hinder elderly people. The quantification of these effects has implications for accessibility of train services and for train dwell times and can be used by others in the design and planning stages o...
Introduction In the US over half a million people are prescribed crutches each year. More than 75... more Introduction In the US over half a million people are prescribed crutches each year. More than 750,000 wheelchair users exist in the UK and wheelchair and crutch users commonly develop shoulder pathology. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of complex topographies on heart rate (HR) and thus energy expenditure, using a wheelchair and differing crutch designs on the exertional body stress. Method Two Paralympics Athletes from the GB amputee football squad were assessed in a Lomax Active wheelchair and 5 different types of crutches in a randomly allocated order over a course representing everyday complex terrains at the Pedestrian Accessibility and Movement Environment Laboratory (PAMELA), University College London. In addition results were compared over the same course with the athletes using their own personal pair of crutches. The PAMELA course consisted of a mixture of 4% and 2.5% cross falls (transverse) and a simulated road crossing, sprint, slalom and a slow straight. Results Initial findings show both athletes needed to work harder, thus spend more energy (13% more) to cope with the wheelchair tasks (2.6) than with the crutches(2.3). The Total Heart Beat Index (THBI) revealed that trying to ambulate with the crutches was more difficult in 4% cross fall (3.3) than on the longitudinal slopes (3.2), followed by 2.5% cross fall (2.85), slalom (2.1) and sprint (1.8). For the same tasks executed using a wheelchair the 2.5% gradient was shown to be the higher energy demanding (3.8), followed by the 4% (3.5), slopes (2.9), slalom (2.2) and sprint (2.1). Both participants reached a lower THBI (2.2) during the same task when using their own crutches. Conclusion The results of this study imply that ambulation with crutches puts less burden than wheelchair. This might be due to the time these athletes spend with crutches, either in training or activities of daily living. Furthermore, the physical strain which they underwent during the complex terrains was clearly reflected on their heart rate. The setting of longer distances to collect more consistent HR data should be the focus of further research. The comparison in performance between athletes and the general population should also be investigated.
Journal of Advanced Transportation, 2016
Frontiers in Computer Science, 2022
Posterior Cortical Atrophy is a rare but significant form of dementia which affects people's ... more Posterior Cortical Atrophy is a rare but significant form of dementia which affects people's visual ability before their memory. This is often misdiagnosed as an eyesight rather than brain sight problem. This paper aims to address the frequent, initial misdiagnosis of this disease as a vision problem through the use of an intelligent, cost-effective, wearable system, alongside diagnosis of the more typical Alzheimer's Disease. We propose low-level features constructed from the IMU data gathered from 35 participants, while they performed a stair climbing and descending task in a real-world simulated environment. We demonstrate that with these features the machine learning models predict dementia with 87.02% accuracy. Furthermore, we investigate how system parameters, such as number of sensors, affect the prediction accuracy. This lays the groundwork for a simple clinical test to enable detection of dementia which can be carried out in the wild.
Frontiers in Medicine
IntroductionVisual processing deficits in Alzheimer's disease are associated with diminished ... more IntroductionVisual processing deficits in Alzheimer's disease are associated with diminished functional independence. While environmental adaptations have been proposed to promote independence, recent guidance gives limited consideration to such deficits and offers conflicting recommendations for people with dementia. We evaluated the effects of clutter and color contrasts on performances of everyday actions in posterior cortical atrophy and memory-led typical Alzheimer's disease.Methods15 patients with posterior cortical atrophy, 11 with typical Alzheimer's disease and 16 healthy controls were asked to pick up a visible target object as part of two pilot repeated-measures investigations from a standing or seated position. Participants picked up the target within a controlled real-world setting under varying environmental conditions: with/without clutter, with/without color contrast cue and far/near target position. Task completion time was recorded using a target-mounte...
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2022
Throughout Europe, low floor buses are being introduced in order to extend access to more elderly... more Throughout Europe, low floor buses are being introduced in order to extend access to more elderly and disabled people. This will be encouraged in the UK by the forthcoming Public Service Vehicles Accessibility Regulations and in Europe in general by the European Bus and Coach Directive. However, this improvement in vehicle specification does little to help people who cannot enter the bus because of deficiencies in the design of bus stops. The need expressed in the COST 322 report (to reduce the horizontal gap between the bus and the platform at a bus stop) is difficult to achieve if the driver is unable to carry out the appropriate maneuvers. The EXCALIBUR project was set up to investigate and test how infrastructure design could be specified so that both of these problems could be eased. EXCALIBUR developed and tested different designs of bus stop infrastructure in order to determine standards for construction of accessible bus stops. The designs were developed based on the outcome...
Traffic engineering and control, 1999
Once a symbol of declining rural services in the wake of rising car ownership and suburbanisation... more Once a symbol of declining rural services in the wake of rising car ownership and suburbanisation, the rural bus has been enjoying a renaissance in the UK. Nationally the Government's Rural Bus Subsidy Grant provides local authorities £60M a year to support conventional services. To complement this, last year it launched the Rural Bus Challenge, an annual competition for innovative schemes, inviting appropriate bids from councils eager to reverse years of under-funding. Last year the Challenge helped fund 46 schemes worth £11.4M, and as the Government this month begins to examine the hundreds of bids for the second Challenge, it is worth asking where all this innovation is leading. For many urban authorities the case for public transport has been as much about equality of access for all, as about efficient use of road space. But while the Challenge will clearly indirectly help disabled travellers, last year's competition included just three projects billed primarily as acces...
2017 IEEE Life Sciences Conference (LSC), Dec 1, 2017
Journal of Transport Geography, 2019
Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Engineering Sustainability, 2019
There is currently great interest in the creation of sustainable and liveable cities, both in the... more There is currently great interest in the creation of sustainable and liveable cities, both in the UK and globally. While it can be argued that good progress is being made in thinking about the needs of future cities, meeting these needs and aspirations in practice poses major challenges of understanding and measurement (what is meant by these terms and how can progress towards their achievement be measured?), complexity (cities are complex systems of systems with many interacting parts) and resilience (will interventions made today be relevant and effective in the future?). The Liveable Cities research programme created a systematic decision-making method for improving urban sustainability and liveability: the Liveable Cities Method (LCM). The LCM prioritises four criteria – individual and societal well-being, resource security, resource efficiency and carbon dioxide emissions as a proxy for environmental harm – in an interconnected framework and assesses the need for, and the resil...
Transportation Research Procedia, 2016
2015 37th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC), 2015
This study aimed to examine simple locomotion and eye behaviour of individuals with Posterior Cor... more This study aimed to examine simple locomotion and eye behaviour of individuals with Posterior Cortical Atrophy (PCA) and typical Alzheimer's disease (tAD) within a simulated real-world environment. Posterior cortical atrophy (PCA) is a neurodegenerative condition characterised by parietal, occipital and occipito-temporal tissue loss and progressive impairment of higher-order visual function in contrast to relatively spared memory and language. Targeted types of locomotion were walking in a series of corridors, up or down stairs, and across an open room with or without the presence of an obstacle. Eye tracking measures and inertial moment units (IMU) were used in this experiment, and resultant acceleration of left foot and fixation duration were extracted. Findings from three participants are presented as a case series: one control, one PCA and one tAD patient. The averaged resultant acceleration of PCA patient was the slowest in all types of locomotion, especially in stairs. The averaged resultant accelerations of PCA and tAD participants were slower than the control participant. The PCA participant had longer mean fixation durations than the tAD and control participants, however, mean fixation duration was similar between tAD and control participants. Results may help characterise locomotion and eye behaviour in PCA and tAD and may suggest ways to support effective diagnosis and assessment of disease progression.
Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part F: Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit, 2015
New train stock or train services are continually being added to the network in the UK. Their des... more New train stock or train services are continually being added to the network in the UK. Their design, in conjunction with European Regulations on train floor and rail height, means there is often a gap between train and platform necessitating at least one physical step. This paper presents the results from a series of experiments testing the time required to board or alight a train across three different gap heights. The experiments were designed to test for the effect of age and luggage type on the time to board or alight. As expected, more steps result in a longer time required to board or alight. More interesting is the effect of age and luggage on time to board and alight with younger people being relatively unaffected by the presence of steps and luggage, whereas both these factors hinder elderly people. The quantification of these effects has implications for accessibility of train services and for train dwell times and can be used by others in the design and planning stages o...
Introduction In the US over half a million people are prescribed crutches each year. More than 75... more Introduction In the US over half a million people are prescribed crutches each year. More than 750,000 wheelchair users exist in the UK and wheelchair and crutch users commonly develop shoulder pathology. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of complex topographies on heart rate (HR) and thus energy expenditure, using a wheelchair and differing crutch designs on the exertional body stress. Method Two Paralympics Athletes from the GB amputee football squad were assessed in a Lomax Active wheelchair and 5 different types of crutches in a randomly allocated order over a course representing everyday complex terrains at the Pedestrian Accessibility and Movement Environment Laboratory (PAMELA), University College London. In addition results were compared over the same course with the athletes using their own personal pair of crutches. The PAMELA course consisted of a mixture of 4% and 2.5% cross falls (transverse) and a simulated road crossing, sprint, slalom and a slow straight. Results Initial findings show both athletes needed to work harder, thus spend more energy (13% more) to cope with the wheelchair tasks (2.6) than with the crutches(2.3). The Total Heart Beat Index (THBI) revealed that trying to ambulate with the crutches was more difficult in 4% cross fall (3.3) than on the longitudinal slopes (3.2), followed by 2.5% cross fall (2.85), slalom (2.1) and sprint (1.8). For the same tasks executed using a wheelchair the 2.5% gradient was shown to be the higher energy demanding (3.8), followed by the 4% (3.5), slopes (2.9), slalom (2.2) and sprint (2.1). Both participants reached a lower THBI (2.2) during the same task when using their own crutches. Conclusion The results of this study imply that ambulation with crutches puts less burden than wheelchair. This might be due to the time these athletes spend with crutches, either in training or activities of daily living. Furthermore, the physical strain which they underwent during the complex terrains was clearly reflected on their heart rate. The setting of longer distances to collect more consistent HR data should be the focus of further research. The comparison in performance between athletes and the general population should also be investigated.
Journal of Advanced Transportation, 2016
Frontiers in Computer Science, 2022
Posterior Cortical Atrophy is a rare but significant form of dementia which affects people's ... more Posterior Cortical Atrophy is a rare but significant form of dementia which affects people's visual ability before their memory. This is often misdiagnosed as an eyesight rather than brain sight problem. This paper aims to address the frequent, initial misdiagnosis of this disease as a vision problem through the use of an intelligent, cost-effective, wearable system, alongside diagnosis of the more typical Alzheimer's Disease. We propose low-level features constructed from the IMU data gathered from 35 participants, while they performed a stair climbing and descending task in a real-world simulated environment. We demonstrate that with these features the machine learning models predict dementia with 87.02% accuracy. Furthermore, we investigate how system parameters, such as number of sensors, affect the prediction accuracy. This lays the groundwork for a simple clinical test to enable detection of dementia which can be carried out in the wild.