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An Introduction to Context-Aware Computing

April 2015 • Podcast
Dr. Anind Dey, Dr. Jeff Boleng

Dr. Anind Dey and Dr. Jeff Boleng introduce context-aware computing and explore issues related to sensor-fueled data in the internet of things.

“My take on context awareness is it is this ability to adapt how an application works with knowledge of what is going on around it. That is, who is using it, information about that individual, information about where they are, what they are doing, and what their preferences are. It is all this information about context of use, and then using that information to adapt how an application works.”

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Software Engineering Institute
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Abstract

As the number of sensors on smart phones continues to grow, these devices can automatically track data from the user's environment, including geolocation, time of day, movement, and other sensor data. Making sense of this data in an ethical manner that respects the privacy of smartphone users is just one of the many challenges faced by researchers. In this podcast, the first in a two-part series, Dr. Anind Dey and Dr. Jeff Boleng introduce context-aware computing and explore other issues related to sensor-fueled data in the internet of things.

About the Speaker

Dr. Anind Dey

Dr. Dey is an early pioneer in context-aware computing and authored one of the seminal papers in the field entitled Understanding and Using Context. We have provided a link to that paper in our transcript. In his research, Dr. Dey uses sensors in mobile technology to develop tools and techniques for understanding and modeling human behavior, primarily within the domains of health, automotive, sustainability and education. One of his projects, dwellSense, uses sensors to monitor daily activities of older people to detect physical or cognitive decline; using computer vision and other tools to detect behavior disorders such as autism; and automobile navigation systems that adapt to an individual’s preferences.

Dr. Jeff Boleng

Dr. Jeff Boleng is a principal researcher on the SEI’s Advanced Mobile Systems team. His interest and experience span a wide gamut of computer science, from network protocols, operating systems, distributed computation, and embedded systems to numerical analysis, scientific computing, parallel processing, and concurrency.