Friday, September 14, 2012

Papers & Presentations at UbiMI 2012

The organisers would like to thank all the workshop participants for their attendance at UbiMI 2012 edition. Furthermore, we would also like to thank the program committee for their hard work and efficiency when reviewing the submitted papers!

Great job and see you next year!


Ubiquitous Inference of Mobility State of Human Custodian in People-Centric Context Sensing
Authors: Mattia Gustarini; Katarzyna Wac

Multimodal Annotation Tool for Challenging Behaviors in People with Autism Spectrum Disorders
Authors: Akane Sano; Javier Hernandez; Jean Deprey; Micah Eckhardt; Matthew S. Goodwin; Rosalind W. Picard

A Preliminary Study of Sensing Appliance Usage for Human Activity Recognition Using Mobile Magnetometer
Authors: Mi Zhang; Alexander A. Sawchuk

Context-Aware Mobile Crowdsourcing
Authors: Andrei Tamilin; Iacopo Carreras; Emmanuel Ssebaggala; Alfonse Opira; Nicola Conci

On the Challenges of Building a Web-based Ubiquitous Application Platform
Authors: Heiko Desruelle; John Lyle; Simon Isenberg; Frank Gielen

Using Ontologies to Reduce User Intervention to Deploy Sensing Campaigns with the InCense Toolkit
Authors: Marcela D. Rodríguez; Roberto Martínez; Moisés Pérez; Luis A. Castro; Jesus Favela

Engaging participants for collaborative sensing of human mobility
Authors: Helena Rodrigues; Maria João Nicolau; Rui João José; Adriano Moreira

A Comparison of Alternative Client/Server Architectures for Ubiquitous Mobile Sensor-Based Applications
Authors: Gary M. Weiss; Jeffrey W. Lockhart

Tuesday, July 31, 2012

UbiMI 2012 accepted papers and workshop schedule


Papers accepted for UbiMI 2012


Gustarini, M.; Wac, K.: Ubiquitous Inference of Mobility State of Human Custodian in People-Centric Context Sensing.
Abstract: People-centric sensing using people’s smartphones offers new research opportunities for large case studies. It presents many challenges, e.g., efficient capture of person’s mobility, understanding of context changes and preservation of user privacy. We propose an accurate and energy-efficient method able to capture user’s mobility, thus the context changes, while preserving his/her privacy. Our solution can be applied to systems that aim to efficiently sense context on smartphones to study large scale phenomena or perform location management.

Sano, A. et al.Multimodal Annotation Tool for Challenging Behaviors in People with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
Abstract: Individuals diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) often have challenging behaviors (CB’s), such as self-injury or emotional outbursts, which can negatively impact the quality of life of themselves and those around them. Recent advances in mobile and ubiquitous technologies provide an opportunity to efficiently and accurately capture important information preceding and associated with these CB’s. The ability to obtain this type of data will help with both intervention and behavioral phenotyping efforts. Through collaboration with behavioral scientists and therapists, we identified relevant design requirements and created an easy-to-use mobile application for collecting, labeling, and sharing in-situ behavior data in individuals diagnosed with ASD. Furthermore, we have released the application to the community as an open- source project so it can be validated and extended by other researchers.

Zhang, M.; Sawchuk, A.: A Preliminary Study of Sensing Appliance Usage for Human Activity Recognition Using Mobile Magnetometer.
Abstract: Human activity recognition and human behavior understanding play a central role in the field of ubiquitous computing. In this paper, we propose a novel method using magnetometer embedded in the mobile phone to recognize activities by detecting household appliance usage. The key idea of our approach is that when the mobile phone user performs a certain activity at home, the embedded magnetometer is capable of capturing the changes of the magnetic field strength around the mobile phone caused by the household appliance in operation. Our mobile application uses these changes as magnetic signatures for each of these appliance such that the daily household activities associated with these appliance such as cooking can be recognized.

Tamilin, A. et al.Context-Aware Mobile Crowdsourcing.
Abstract: Ubiquity of internet-connected media- and sensor-equipped portable devices has emerged a range of opportunities for direct involvement of citizens into public decision making, leading to a new participatory format of public administration functioning. Intersecting the power of the crowdsourcing problem-solving paradigm by directly relying on human intelligence, with instantaneity and situation-awareness of mobile technologies, one gets a context-aware crowdsourcing approach for problem-solving in the right circumstances with the right people. In this paper, we present a prototype implementation of a context-aware mobile crowdsourcing system that enables the deployment and execution of crowd- sourcing campaigns with users carrying mobile devices.The system is designed to maximize conditions for user participation, while minimizing the usage of energy. The paper describes the system architecture, defines an optimized sampling algorithm, and outlines a preliminary experimentation study carried out.

Desruelle, H. et al.On the Challenges of Building a Web-based Ubiquitous Application Platform.
Abstract: People use an increasing number of consumer electronic de- vices to access their mobile apps. To enhance the applications’ immersive user experience, these devices often ex- pose APIs for accessing a wide array of sensors and domain- specific capabilities. Existing mobile application environments, however, only provide limited support for cross-device access of such APIs. To address this limitation, the Webinos platform was designed. Webinos is a virtualized Web-based application platform, aiming to support the collaboration of multiple devices within a single mobile application. In this paper we elaborate on the Webinos platform design. We dis- cuss the encountered design challenges regarding portability, scalability, and privacy, and how these were mitigated.

Rodríguez, M. et al.Using Ontologies to Reduce User Intervention to Deploy Sensing Campaigns with the InCense Toolkit.
Abstract: This paper presents the InCense research toolkit to facilitate researchers with little or no technical background to implement a sensing application for mobile phones. To reach this end, InCense provides a GUI and an interactive ontology to enable users to define the configuration of the sensing application, i.e. what sensing components to add, and the flow of the sensing session. We illustrate the ease of use of the InCense platform through a scenario in which both opportunistic and participatory sensing paradigms are used.

Rodrigues, H. et al.Engaging participants for collaborative sensing of human mobility.
Abstract: Human mobility has been widely studied for a variety of purposes, from urban planning to the study of spread of diseases. These studies depend heavily on large datasets, and recent advances in collaborative sensing and WiFi infrastructures have created new opportunities for generating that data. However, these methods and procedures require the participation of a significant community of users through extended periods of time. In this paper, we address the problem of how to engage people to participate in the data collection process. We have conducted a user study on the utilisation of a mobile collaborative sensing application. We have found that users react positively to campaigns, but it is difficult to keep them participating for long periods of time. We also hypothesise that one must close the loop, rewarding the participants with services based on the collected data, eventually showing that there is added value obtainable from crowd sourcing.

Weiss, G.; Lockhart, J.: A Comparison of Alternative Client/Server Architectures for Ubiquitous Mobile Sensor-Based Applications.
Abstract: Mobile devices such as smart phones, tablet computers, and music players are ubiquitous. These devices typically contain many sensors, such as vision sensors (cameras), audio sensors (microphones), acceleration sensors (accelerometers) and location sensors (e.g., GPS), and also have some capability to send and receive data wirelessly. Sensor arrays on these mobile devices make innovative applications possible, especially when data mining is applied to the sensor data. But a key design decision is how best to distribute the responsibilities between the client (e.g., smartphone) and any servers. In this paper we investigate alternative architectures, ranging from a “dumb” client, where virtually all processing takes place on the server, to a “smart” client, where no server is needed. We describe the advantages and disadvantages of these alternative architectures and describe under what circumstances each is most appropriate. We use our own WISDM (WIreless Sensor Data Mining) architecture to pro- vide concrete examples of the various alternatives.

Schedule
9 - 9:15am - Gustarini, M.; Wac, K.: Ubiquitous Inference of Mobility State of Human Custodian in People-Centric Context Sensing.
9:15 - 9:30am - Sano, A. et al.Multimodal Annotation Tool for Challenging Behaviors in People with Autism Spectrum Disorders.
9:30 - 9:45am - Zhang, M.; Sawchuk, A.: A Preliminary Study of Sensing Appliance Usage for Human Activity Recognition Using Mobile Magnetometer.
9:45 - 10:00am - Tamilin, A. et al.Context-Aware Mobile Crowdsourcing.
10 - 11am - COFFEE BREAK 
11 - 11:15am - Desruelle, H. et al.On the Challenges of Building a Web-based Ubiquitous Application Platform.
11:15 - 11:30am - Rodríguez, M. et al.Using Ontologies to Reduce User Intervention to Deploy Sensing Campaigns with the InCense Toolkit.
11:30 - 11:45am - Rodrigues, H. et al.Engaging participants for collaborative sensing of human mobility.
11:45 - 12pm - Weiss, G.; Lockhart, J.: A Comparison of Alternative Client/Server Architectures for Ubiquitous Mobile Sensor-Based Applications.
12 - 1:30pm - LUNCH
1:30 - 2pm - Organizers' presentation and discussion panel kick-off

2 - 2:55pm - Discussion panel
2:55 - 3pm - Workshop wrap-up
3 - 3:30pm - WRAP-UP COFFEE

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Workshop registration

Last minute but important information!

In order to register to attend this workshop, you will need the following code: W04-UBMI

Thank you!

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Acceptance notifications sent!

We apologize for the delay on the notification emails. We just sent the acceptance/rejection notification emails to all the authors, so please do check your inboxes!

For all the authors, we hope the reviews will provide you with valuable input and feedback on your research paper, regardless of if it was accepted for this years' UbiMI 2012 workshop.

The revised and camera-ready version of the papers are due 15th July, 2012 (23h59 GMT+3h). This is a tight deadline, as we need to prepare the workshop papers' bundle for the Ubicomp conference workshop chairs for inclusion on the supplemental proceedings.

Furthermore, for the workshop itself, authors are required to present their work in a 7 minute presentation, to be followed with a short discussion. As such, authors are required to submit the presentation in .pdf format for inclusion on the UbiMI 2012 website for future reference. The deadline for the workshop presentation is the 1st September, 2012 (23h59 GMT+3h).

Once again, thank you for your submissions and hard work,

UbiMI organizers

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Well done!

Thank you for the amazing papers you submitted!

We will get back to you with the reviews on your papers by 25th June, 2012 23h59 GMT+2. You'll then have a period of time to address the reviewers comments and submit the camera ready version of the paper by 1st July, 2012 23h59 GMT+2.

Once again, thank you for your submissions!

UbiMI organizers

Friday, June 1, 2012

Almost there!

Submissions are flowing in, great work! We look forward to read them all!

Due to numerous requests, we have decided to extend the deadline to the 8th June, 2012 at 23h59 (GMT +2).

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Welcome to UbiMI'12!










Thanks to the rapid development of mobile technologies, smartphones allow people to be reachable anywhere and anytime. In addition to the benefits for end users, researchers and developers can also benefit from the powerful devices that participants potentially carry on a daily basis. This mini-track workshop brings together researchers with an interest on using mobile devices as instruments to collect data and conduct mobile user studies, with a focus on understanding human-behavior, routines and gathering context.

Recruiting a large number of participants for user studies in HCI has been challenging (i.e., participation compensation, location and time differences, etc.). Techniques such as surveys and questionnaires for data collection have taken a new form in recent years, where “in the field” has been replaced with “online”; and automated logging devices have augmented diaries, video recorders and cameras (e.g., Microsoft’s SenseCam, Nokia’s LifeBlog). This shift represents a new trend in research methods, whereby mobile devices are used to collect data on participants and their behaviors.

In this workshop, we bring together researchers who take advantage of the proliferation of mobile devices and use them as instruments for research on ubiquitous computing. We are especially interested in the mobile devices, systems, applications, methods and tools that were built to explore such rich datasets. More so, we want researchers to share their experiences, successes and frustrations on conducting research in such power and processing constrained devices in order to capture a state-of-art on theories, models, methodologies and tools that cope with these challenges.