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Mobile Computing >> Imagination on the Move
6/24/2005
Smarter SmartphonesTechnologists have seen the future of mobile computing at Carnegie Mellon University, and that future revolves around smartphones that actually are smart. You know the smartphone: any handheld device that integrates personal information management and mobile phone capabilities. At CMU, however, researchers under the leadership of Professor Asim Smailagic have developed a mobile, wearable system that is one part PDA, one part cell phone, and one part virtual secretary—it can screen calls and send them to voicemail if the user is in the middle of a class or important meeting. The system, dubbed SenSay (for “sen”sing and “say”ing), is currently in pilot phase at the university’s Pittsburgh campus, and could be implemented on a broader basis as soon as next year.
| GREAT IDEA |
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| At Carnegie Mellon University, researchers have developed a mobile, wearable system that is one part PDA, one part cell phone, and one part virtual secretary. By “sensing” the wearer’s environment and situation— say, if the user is in the middle of a class or important meeting—it can screen calls and send them to voicemail. |
Smailagic bills the portable system as a “context-aware” mobile phone. It consists of an ordinary mobile phone, a sensor box mounted on a user’s hip, and voice and ambient microphones mounted somewhere near the user’s neck. The microphones record sounds in the user’s environment (including the user’s own voice), and software in the sensor box analyzes the data to determine what kind of situation the user is in. After comparing this data with a certain set of rules, the software decides what to do with the call. If, for instance, the program determines that the user is in a lecture or meeting, all incoming calls are sent immediately to voicemail. If, on the other hand, the program determines that a user is in the middle of a conversation, calls ring through in silent mode, vibrating to notify the user that someone’s on the line.
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AT CARNEGIE MELLION, |
“The way we see it, this research takes mobile computing to the next level,” says Smailagic, who predicts the system will retail for $200 when it hits the general market. “Instead of having to worry about interrupting students in a particular environment, the phone d'es all of the thinking for them.”
Down the road, Smailagic hopes to network SenSay systems into the school’s wireless network, and create a plug-in application that expands the context for these context-aware tools. Specifically, researchers are working on ways to enable SenSay units to interface with user course schedules and Global Positioning System (GPS) maps of campus.
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