The following Annotated Bibliography provides a view of the past research and development work undertaken in the field of Ubiquitous Location Sensing Applications. The various applications developed using a wide variety of sensing technologies like Bluetooth, GPS, Infrared, IEEE 802.11 etc are described by authors. This description and analysis of different technologies will help to form a comprehensive framework or guide describing various location sensing techniques on mobile devices. This framework can also be helpful while choosing a sensing application depending on the type of requirements.
Article 01
Hightower, J. & Borriello, G., (2001). Location Systems for Ubiquitous
Computing. Computer, 34(8), pp. 57-66.
The paper highlights a survey and classification for location-based devices describing a wide variety of products available. The authors have also discussed some current research conducted in this field. Hightower, J. is a PhD candidate and Borriello, G. is a professor, both from University of Washington. Borriello is also the director of Intel research lab in Seattle. The paper is taken from the peer reviewed and credible Compute Journal, also available online through the IEEE Computer database.
According to the authors, many researchers have spent time and efforts in technologies which can automatically detect people, equipment etc. However, these technologies solve a specific problem or support a particular application; hence the systems vary in different parameters, such as type of devices, power requirements, resolution of time and space. Hence to address these problems the paper discusses a nomenclature of location-aware applications, which would help developers and researchers in identifying new opportunities in this domain.
The paper highlights the use of Global Positioning System (GPS), as the most popular location-sensing technique. Typically a location-sensing system provides 2 types of information: physical (GPS) provides physical links to places (coordinates) or symbolic which includes ideas of where something is located.
The authors have provided an evaluation of characteristics of a location system on the basis of Accuracy, Precision, Scale, Recognition, Cost and Limitations. Such an evaluation provides helpful tips not only to researchers, but also to buyers on deciding type of devices based on supported functionalities. The authors have used these criteria to survey some of the research and commercial location systems available in the market.
Such an evaluation is very useful to develop a framework of characters and functionalities that a location system should support. These pointers shall be very useful while preparing a framework of location-based technologies for the project report. However, the only limitation of this taxonomy and survey is that the authors have conducted the evaluation on systems mostly using GPS technique and haven’t focused on other techniques such as Bluetooth, Infrared, wireless networks etc.
Article 02
Smith, J., Fishkin, K., Jiang, B., Mamishev, A., Philipose, M., Rea, A., Roy, S. &
Rajan, K., (2005, September). RFID-Based Techniques for Human-Activity
Detection. Communications of the ACM, 48(9), pp. 39-44.
The authors have highlighted the need for Ubiquitous Computing scenarios for deducing human activity by showcasing what a person is doing or attempting to do. This human activity tracking in past was performed using direct observation using cameras, contact switches etc. The paper reports certain current applications which use direct observation with indirect approach checking human activity from their effect on the surrounding environment such as objects, places they interact with.
The paper discusses work on human-activity by Tapia et al (2003) which implements 3 techniques: active sensor beacons, computer vision and RFID. However, applications using active RFIDs are unable to detect
