Adam D. Rea

The Mobile Sensing Platform: An Embedded Activity Recognition System

Activity-aware systems have inspired novel user interfaces and new applications in smart environments, surveillance, emergency response, and military missions. Systems that recognize human activities from body-worn sensors can further open the door to a world of healthcare applications, such as fitness monitoring, eldercare support, long-term preventive and chronic care, and cognitive assistance. Wearable systems have the advantage of being with the user continuously. So, for example, a fitness application could use real-time activity information to encourage users to perform opportunistic activities. Furthermore, the general public is more likely to accept such activity recognition systems because they are usually easy to turn off or remove.

RFID-based techniques for human-activity detection

The iBracelet and the Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform promise the ability to infer human activity directly from sensor readings.

Bonfire: a nomadic system for hybrid laptop-tabletop interaction

We present Bonfire, a self-contained mobile computing system that uses two laptop-mounted laser micro-projectors to project an interactive display space to either side of a laptop keyboard. Coupled with each micro-projector is a camera to enable hand gesture tracking, object recognition, and information transfer within the projected space. Thus, Bonfire is neither a pure laptop system nor a pure tabletop system, but an integration of the two into one new nomadic computing platform. This integration (1) enables observing the periphery and responding appropriately, e.g., to the casual placement of objects within its field of view, (2) enables integration between physical and digital objects via computer vision, (3) provides a horizontal surface in tandem with the usual vertical laptop display, allowing direct pointing and gestures, and (4) enlarges the input/output space to enrich existing applications. We describe Bonfires architecture, and offer scenarios that highlight Bonfires advantages. We also include lessons learned and insights for further development and use.

Hands-on RFID: wireless wearables for detecting use of objects

Recent research has explored ways to obtain and use knowledge of person-object interactions. We present a novel pair of wearables, a glove and a bracelet, that detect when users interact with unobtrusively tagged objects. The glove can also report whether the grasp was with the palm or the fingertips. Both devices have been built and deployed. We present the, requirements, design and early experiences.

An ecosystem of platforms to support sensors for personal fitness

We have developed a collection of portable platforms to enable context-aware applications to help users with their personal fitness. Our approach has been to focus on established form-factors such as cellphones and wrist-watches for the user interfaces. A variety of sensors are used to infer aspects of the users context and proactively gather and display information that is likely to be useful at that time. In this paper, we highlight some of our platforms, the roles they can play, some of the capabilities we have already implemented, and highlight some of the applications we are currently developing