Abstract: In the past a crisis event was notified by local witnesses that use to make phone calls to the special services. They reported by speech according to their observation on the crisis site. The recent improvements in the area of human computer interfaces make possible the development of context-aware systems for crisis management that support people in escaping a crisis even before external help is available at site. Apart from collecting the people's reports on the crisis, these systems are assumed to automatically extract useful clues during typical human computer interaction sessions. The novelty of the current research resides in the attempt to involve computer vision techniques for performing an automatic evaluation of facial expressions during human-computer interaction sessions with a crisis management system. The current paper details an approach for an automatic facial expression recognition module that may be included in crisis-oriented applications. The algorithm uses Active Appearance Model for facial shape extraction and SVM classifier for Action Units detection and facial expression recognition.

Abstract: Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have increased in popularity in recent years and are now involved in many activities, professional and otherwise. First responders, those teams and individuals who are the first to respond in crisis situations, have been using UAVs to assist them in locating victims and identifying hazards without endangering human personnel needlessly. However, professional UAV controllers tend to be heavy and cumbersome, requiring both hands to operate. First responders, on the other hand, often need to carry other important equipment and need to keep their hands free during a mission. This work considers enabling first responders to control UAVs with single-handed gestures, freeing their other hand and reducing their encumbrance. Two sets of gesture UAV controls are presented and implemented in a simulated environment, and a two-part user study is conducted: the first part assesses the comfort of each gesture and their intuitive association with basic flight control concepts; and the second evaluates two different modes of gesture control in a population of users including both genders, and first responders as well as members of the general populace. The results, consisting of both objective and subjective measurements, are discussed, hindrances and problems are identified, and directions of future work and research are mapped out.