Thomas Ploetz

About: Thomas Ploetz

I am a Lecturer in "Context Aware Computing". My research agenda is centered on "Computational Behaviour Analysis", which basically means that I am building computational (that is statistical) models that describe and shall help assessing human behaviour. The basis for this is the analysis of behavioural data that are captured in a pretty opportunistic way utilising a variety of sensing modalities, most notably pervasive / ubiquitous sensors (e.g., accelerometers, RFID, environmental sensors), cameras, or microphones. The modelling itself is agnostic in terms of the actual choice of sensing modalities as long as the relevant information for behaviour analysis is captured. Behaviour data are sequential by definition. Consequently, related modelling techniques are focussed on sequential models (for example of Markovian type). I am especially interested in quantitative assessments of human behaviour, which is of value for, e.g., skill assessment. My day-to-day work can probably best be summarised as applied machine learning for activity recognition.

The central theme of my research is to develop techniques and systems that actually have an impact on people's life. Therefore, my research is almost always connected to some practical application (in contrast to purely theoretical work) and I am keen on deploying systems I develop in the "wild", i.e., in real-world settings. The most prominent domain for this kind of work is health where I am working on computational assessments of behavioural phenotypes of, for example, Parkinson's, Dementia, or Autism. Within the Digital Interaction group I am involved in a number of projects that address these research themes from different angles.

PhD studentships available!

Click here for information about exciting opportunities for PhD studentships to work in the field of computational human behaviour analysis (activity recognition).

contact me:

thomas.ploetz@newcastle.ac.uk

mobile: +44 7588 043643

landline: +44 191 246 4628

A (hopefully) up-to-date list of my publications including those from before my Newcastle time can be found on Mendeley:

Thomas Ploetz's citations

Publications

2012

Automatic Assessment of Problem Behavior in Individuals with Developmental Disabilities (2012) Thomas Ploetz, Nils Y. Hammerla, Agata Rozga, Andrea Reavis, Nathan Call, Gregory D. Abowd, Proc. Int. Conf. Ubiquitous Comp. (UbiComp)

Automatic Synchronization of Wearable Sensors and Video-Cameras for Ground Truth Annotation –- A Practical Approach (2012) Thomas Ploetz, Chen Chen, Nils Hammerla, Gregory D. Abowd, Proc. Int. Symp. Wearable Computing

GymSkill: A Personal Trainer for Physical Exercises (2012) Andreas Moeller, Luis Roalter, Stefan Diewald, Matthias Kranz, Nils Hammerla, Patrick Olivier, Thomas Ploetz, Proc. Int. Conf. Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom)

Hydrostream: A Platform for Collecting, Annotating and Analyzing Water Pressure for Health Applications (2012) Edison Thomaz, Thomas Ploetz, Irfan Essa, Gregory D. Abowd, Proc. Emerging Technologies for Healthcare and Aging Workshop (in conjunction with CHI 2012)

Physical Mobile Physical Exercises: Individualized Skill Assessment Using Mobile Interaction Devices (2012) Andreas Moeller, Nils Hammerla, Thomas Ploetz, Luis Roalter, Stefan Diewald, Patrick Olivier, Matthias Kranz, Pervasive and Mobile Computing

Recognizing Water-Based Activities in the Home Through Infrastructure-Mediated Sensing (2012) Edison Thomaz, Vinay Bettadapura, Gabriel Reyes, Megha Sandesh, Grant Schindler, Thomas Ploetz, Gregory D. Abowd, Irfan Essa, Proc. Int. Conf. Ubiquitous Comp. (UbiComp)

The French Kitchen: Task-Based Learning in an Instrumented Kitchen (2012) Clare Hooper, Anne Preston, Madeline Balaam, Paul Seedhouse, Daniel G. Jackson, Cuong Pham, Cassim Ladha, Karim Ladha, Thomas Ploetz, Patrick Olivier, Proc. Int. Conf. Ubiquitous Comp. (UbiComp)

2011

Assessing Motor Performance with PCA (2011) Nils Hammerla, Thomas Ploetz, Peter Andras, Patrick Olivier, Proc. Int. Workshop on Frontiers in Activity Recognition using Pervasive Sensing (in conjunction with Pervasive 2011)

Cueing Swallowing in Parkinson’s Disease (2011) Roisin McNaney, Stephen Lindsay, Karim Ladha, Cassim Ladha, Guy Schofield, Thomas Ploetz, Nils Hammerla, Daniel Jackson, Richard Walker, Nick Miller, Patrick Olivier, Proc. ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

Feature Learning for Activity Recognition in Ubiquitous Computing (2011) Thomas Ploetz, Nils Hammerla, Patrick Olivier, Proc. Int. Joint Conf. on Art. Intelligence

GymSkill: Mobile Exercise Skill Assessment to Support Personal Health and Fitness (2011) Andreas Moeller, Johannes Scherr, Luis Roalter, Stefan Diewald, Matthias Kranz, Nils Hammerla, Thomas Ploetz, Patrick Olivier, Proc. Int. Conf. Pervasive Computing (Video Proceedings)

Habitual physical activity in mitochondrial disease (2011) S. Apabhai, G.S. Gorman, L. Sutton, J.L. Elson, Thomas Ploetz, D.M. Turnbull, Michael I Trenell, PLoS One

Interactive Techniques for Labeling Activities Of Daily Living to Assist Machine Learning (2011) Edison Thomaz, Thomas Ploetz, Irfan Essa, Gregory D Abowd, Proc. Int. Workshop on Interactive Systems in Healthcare

Learning French in a Digital Kitchen (2011) Paul Seedhouse, Saandia Ali, Daniel G. Jackson, Thomas Ploetz, Patrick Olivier, Proc. Int. Conf. Europ Assoc for Computer-Assisted Language Learning

Markov Models for Handwriting Recognition (2011) Thomas Ploetz, Gernot A. Fink, Springer, p. 78, London: Springer

Physical activity intensity but not sedentary activity is reduced in chronic fatigue syndrome and is related to autonomic regulation (2011) Julia L Newton, Jessie Pairman, Kate Hallsworth, Sarah Moore, Thomas Ploetz, Michael I Trenell, Quarterly Journal of Medicine

Rapid specification and automated generation of prompting systems to assist people with dementia (2011) Jesse Hoey, Thomas Ploetz, Dan Jackson, Andrew Monk, Cuong Pham, Patrick Olivier, Pervasive and Mobile Computing

Towards a Pervasive Kitchen Infrastructure for Measuring Cooking Competence (2011) Juergen Wagner, Thomas Ploetz, Aart van Halteren, Jetti Hoonhout, Paula Moynihan, Daniel Jackson, Cassim Ladha, Karim Ladha, Patrick Olivier, Proc. Int. Conf. Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare

Who is Cooking? Sensor-Based Actor Identification in the Kitchen (2011) Thomas Ploetz, Cuong Pham, Patrick Olivier, Proc. Int. Workshop on Frontiers in Activity Recognition using Pervasive Sensing (in conjunction with Pervasive 2011)

2010

A Dynamic Time Warping Approach To Real-Time Activity Recognition for Food Preparation (2010) Cuong Pham, Thomas Ploetz, Patrick Olivier, First Int. Joint Conf. on Ambient Intelligence

Activity Recognition and Healthier Food Preparation (2010) Thomas Ploetz, P. Moynihan, Cuong Pham, Patrick Olivier, Activity Recognition in Pervasive Intelligent Environments, Atlantis Press

Digital object memories in the internet of things workshop (2010) Michael Schneider, Alexander Kröner, Peter Stephan, Thomas Ploetz, Fahim Kawsar, Gerd Kortuem, Proceedings of the 12th ACM international conference adjunct papers on Ubiquitous computing - Ubicomp '10, p. 527, New York, New York, USA: ACM Press, url

How to do good research in Activity Recognition? (2010) Thomas Ploetz, Workshop on “How to do good research in Activity Recognition” (in conjunction with Pervasive 2010)

Real-Time Activity Recognition for Food Preparation (2010) Cuong Pham, Thomas Ploetz, Patrick Olivier, IEEE International Conference on Computing and Communication Technologies, Hanoi: IEEE

Towards Feature Learning for HMM-based Offline Handwriting Recognition (2010) Nils Hammerla, Thomas Ploetz, S. Vajda, G. A. Fink, International Workshop on Frontiers of Arabic Handwriting Recognition

2009

Camera-Based Analysis of Whiteboard Notes (2009) S. Vajda, T. Ramforth, Thomas Ploetz, G. Fink, Int. Workshop on Camera-Based Document Analysis and Recognition, p. 42--49

Layout Analysis for Camera-Based Whiteboard Notes (2009) S. Vajda, Thomas Ploetz, G. Fink, Journal of Universal Computer Science 15(18), p. 3307--3324

Markov Models for Offline Handwriting Recognition: A Survey (2009) Thomas Ploetz, G. Fink, Int. Journal on Document Analysis and Recognition 12(4), p. 269--298, pdf

Associated Projects

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    Activity Recognition to Improve Motor Performance in Parkinson's

    In this project we aim to develop a method that can be used to assess one of the properties of motor skill: the efficiency of motion.  This will have application in degenerative conditions such as Parkinson’s Disease and Dementia which have a signif...
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    Language Learning in the Wild

    This project aims to develop the next generation of technology applied to language teaching, namely the use of digital sensors together with a Task-Based Learning approach. Specifically, togethor with the  Digital Institute we will build a digital kit...
  • outside building

    TEDDI: Building Management and Energy Demand

    This research project involves the design and development of a sensing infrastructure that consists of networked physical (e.g. presence sensors, power consumption sensors) and virtual sensors (e.g. calendar and room booking sensors, application usage ...
  • Surgical Skills Assesment

    ACCEL-O-SURG (accelerometers for surgical training)

    In this study we aim to understand the changes in motor skill that take place during the early phases of learning a new fine motor skill task. The motor skill we will be measuring is suturing. We will attach sensors to the surgical suturing instruments...
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    SiDE: Social Inclusion through the Digital Economy

    SiDE is an interdisciplinary research project aimed at realising the potential for digital technologies to transform the lives of people who are socially excluded. Poor health, disability, family breakdown, poverty and unemployment are just some of the...
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    iLAB: Learn Kitchen

    The iLAB: Learn Kitchen adapts the technology of the Ambient Kitchen which is aimed for communication with people with dementia and adapts it to the field of language learning. Sensors are attached to all equipment and ingredients so that each time an ...
  • Kitchen

    Ambient Kitchen

    The Ambient Kitchen is one of Culture Lab's ongoing projects to examine the ways which smart environments can assist older adults or people with cognitive impairments.   The kitchen includes a host of  different sensing technologies which combine th...