Human mobility modeling has many applications in location-based services, mobile networking, city management, and epidemiology. Previous sensing approaches for human mobility are mainly categorized into two types: stationary sensing systems (e.g., surveillance cameras and toll booths) and mobile sensing systems (e.g., smartphone apps and vehicle tracking devices). However, stationary sensing systems only provide mobility information of human in limited coverage (e.g., camera-equipped roads) and mobile sensing systems only capture a limited number of people (e.g., people using a particular smartphone app). In this work, we design a novel system Mohen to model human mobility with a heterogeneous sensing system. The key novelty of Mohen is to fundamentally extend the sensing coverage of a large-scale stationary sensing system with a small-scale sensing system. Based on the evaluation on data from real-world urban sensing systems, our system outperforms them by 35% and achieves a competitive result to an Oracle method.
more »
« less
A Smart Walker for People with Both Visual and Mobility Impairment
In recent years, significant work has been done in technological enhancements for mobility aids (smart walkers). However, most of this work does not cover the millions of people who have both mobility and visual impairments. In this paper, we design and study four different configurations of smart walkers that are specifically targeted to the needs of this population. We investigated different sensing technologies (ultrasound-based, infrared depth cameras and RGB cameras with advanced computer vision processing), software configurations, and user interface modalities (haptic and audio signal based). Our experiments show that there are several engineering choices that can be used in the design of such assistive devices. Furthermore, we found that a holistic evaluation of the end-to-end performance of the systems is necessary, as the quality of the user interface often has a larger impact on the overall performance than increases in the sensing accuracy beyond a certain point.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1852002
- PAR ID:
- 10323630
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Sensors
- Volume:
- 21
- Issue:
- 10
- ISSN:
- 1424-8220
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 3488
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Urban environments pose significant challenges to pedestrian safety and mobility. This paper introduces a novel modular sensing framework for developing real-time, multimodal streetscape applications in smart cities. Prior urban sensing systems predominantly rely either on fixed data modalities or centralized data processing, resulting in limited flexibility, high latency, and superficial privacy protections. In contrast, our framework integrates diverse sensing modalities, including cameras, mobile IMU sensors, and wearables into a unified ecosystem leveraging edge-driven distributed analytics. The proposed modular architecture, supported by standardized APIs and message-driven communication, enables hyper-local sensing and scalable development of responsive pedestrian applications. A concrete application demonstrating multimodal pedestrian tracking is developed and evaluated. It is based on the cross-modal inference module, which fuses visual and mobile IMU sensor data to associate detected entities in the camera domain with their corresponding mobile device.We evaluate our framework’s performance in various urban sensing scenarios, demonstrating an online association accuracy of 75% with a latency of ≈39 milliseconds. Our results demonstrate significant potential for broader pedestrian safety and mobility scenarios in smart cities.more » « less
-
Whenever a user interacts with a device, mechanical work is performed to actuate the user interface elements; the resulting energy is typically wasted, dissipated as sound and heat. Previous work has shown that many devices can be powered entirely from this otherwise wasted user interface energy. For these devices, wires and batteries, along with the related hassles of replacement and charging, become unnecessary and onerous. So far, these works have been restricted to proof-of-concept demonstrations; a specific bespoke harvesting and sensing circuit is constructed for the application at hand. The challenge of harvesting energy while simultaneously sensing fine-grained input signals from diverse modalities makes prototyping new devices difficult. To fill this gap, we present a hardware toolkit which provides a common electrical interface for harvesting energy from user interface elements. This facilitates exploring the composability, utility, and breadth of enabled applications of interaction-powered smart devices. We design a set of energy as input harvesting circuits, a standard connective interface with 3D printed enclosures, and software libraries to enable the exploration of devices where the user action generates the energy needed to perform the device's primary function. This exploration culminated in a demonstration campaign where we prototype several exemplar popular toys and gadgets, including battery-free Bop-It--- a popular 90s rhythm game, an electronic Etch-a-sketch, a Simon-Says-style memory game, and a service rating device. We run exploratory user studies to understand how generativity, creativity, and composability are hampered or facilitated by these devices. These demonstrations, user study takeaways, and the toolkit itself provide a foundation for building interactive and user-focused gadgets whose usability is not affected by battery charge and whose service lifetime is not limited by battery wear.more » « less
-
Arabnia, Hamid; Deligiannidis, Leonidas; Tinetti, Fernando; Tran, Quoc-Nam (Ed.)Many individuals who are in need of mobility assistance do not have access to the proper wheelchair for their type of mobility disability. There is growing research towards creating smart wheelchairs using a variety of methods, such as biopotential signals or eye tracking for input and LiDAR, ultrasonic sensors, or using a camera to create a map or track position. There have been other methods, such as voice control, sip and puff, and hand gestures, but there are disadvantages of these that can limit their usefulness. Smart wheelchairs should account for collisions, but also emphasize the safety and comfort of the user. In this paper, we review and classify state-of-the-art research in smart wheelchairs. Many machine learning models are used for various parts of wheelchairs, from mapping and signal processing to input classification. Smart wheelchairs rely on various hardware devices, such as eye trackers, electrode caps, EMG armbands, RPLidar, RGB-cameras, and ultrasonic sensors. Some hybrid models use a combination of methods to account for some of their limitations. Some research has leaned towards training games to help teach users. Future work should include improvement of classification methods for various input signals and improvement on the accessibility of the technology.more » « less
-
IoT devices like smart cameras and speakers provide convenience but can collect sensitive information within private spaces. While research has investigated user perception of comfort with information flows originating from these types of devices, little focus has been given to the role of the sensing hardware in influencing these sentiments. Given the proliferation of trusted execution environments (TEEs) across commodity- and server-class devices, we surveyed 1049 American adults using the Contextual Integrity framework to understand how the inclusion of cloud-based TEEs in IoT ecosystems may influence comfort with data collection and use. We find that cloud-based TEEs significantly increase user comfort across information flows. These increases are more pronounced for devices manufactured by smaller companies and show that cloud-based TEEs can bridge the previously-documented gulfs in user trust between small and large companies. Sentiments around consent, bystander data, and indefinite retention are unaffected by the presence of TEEs, indicating the centrality of these norms.more » « less
An official website of the United States government

