Phone Sensing - distributed sensing in human networks

Project Description:

An opportunistic sensor network protocol for smart phones and a context aware social network application that utilizes aforementioned network.

Overview:

The proliferation of smart-phones with an array of functions that go beyond their most basic capabilities as phones and PDAs, intertwined with the growing influence of social networks on our society has yielded an opening for distributed applications that can automatically provide useful and interesting information for groups and users of the aforemetioned networks. Nowadays, the information that users share on to the social networks (studying, practicing, at a show, etc.) is acquired through explicit acts by the users themselves. Smartphones have an arrangement of embedded sensors that can, in controlled manner, convey a considerable amount of information regarding the activity of their users almost without any explicit action. “Sensors” such as, GPS (localization), accelerometers (movement), camera (light or imaging), microphone (sound) are able to, directly or indirectly, characterize the phone’s surrounding environment. These sensors can also be used to supply other applications such as: i) workout monitor ii) Parking space finder iii) Finding elements of a specific group on a determined region. Additionally, this data can also be used to relay the usual input on to popular social networks, such as Facebook or Twitter.

Current status: Testing OSN Communication Protocols

Active period: Set. 2010 - Oct. 2011

GEMS team: Nadir Türkman