Current Research

Mobile Device Interaction

I am currently working in the area of mobile device interaction, part of the group's hands-on computing focus area.  In particular I am looking at new ways for users to provide input for mobile device scenarios where using keyboards/mice are not feasible, such as by sensing physical forces that users can apply to device casings.

Energy Management

I am interested in methods of minimising the energy consumption of computers, both for mobile devices with limited battery resources, and to reduce the overall need for energy. 

Somniloquy is a system which allows computers to "talk in their sleep" and thereby removes the need for users to leave their computers on while they are absent, either for remote access or to leave background applications running. 

CABMAN is an architecture allowing mobile devices to monitor their battery level in a more context-aware fashion, thus not bothering the user at inappropriate times, and maintaining better notions of when energy is scarce or abundant.

SenseCam

I have also been doing some work with the SenseCam wearable camera, including thinking about what sensors are best for triggering picture taking, and, on the other side of the coin, in looking at the privacy implications of always-on logging.

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Previous Research (pre-Microsoft)

Haggle

The Haggle project is exploring networking for mobile users using both local peer-to-peer wireless connections as well as infrastructure-based Internet access when available.  For example, an email could be transferred by peer-to-peer networking if the receipient is nearby, but today's software and network architecture do not facilitate this.

In Haggle we created a software architecture for mobile devices which seamlessly makes use of both opportunistic peer-to-peer and infrastructure-based networking to meet the data transfer requirements of applications, while also respecting the limited resources of mobile devices.

Secure Mobile Computing

In the secure mobile computing project we looked at how people can make use of public hardware (e.g. internet cafes, situated displays, etc) without exposing themselves to security threats in the form of keylogging, screengrabbing, remote session hijacking, etc. This is achieved using a personal device (e.g. a smart phone) in combination to the public device, where the personal device runs all the user's applications and censors the output to and input from public devices. The system aims to capture the privacy and trustability of the personal device with the usability of the large input/output hardware of situated devices.

For more details see the paper, and some details for building the system (based on VNC) can be found here.

Place Lab

Place Lab enables low-cost, easy-to-use device positioning for location-enhanced computing applications. Clients can determine their location privately without constant interaction with a central service, by listening for radio beacons such as 802.11 access points, GSM cell phone towers, and fixed Bluetooth devices that already exist in large numbers around us in the environment. 

Place Lab has been to deploy and study a large number of location-aware applications, including for social location disclosure, for location-based reminders, and for location-enhanced messaging.

Audio Location

The audio location project looked at the use of commodity audio hardware to perform fine-grained location of people in the environment. Unlike other fine-grained location systems, we used completely off-the-shelf audio hardware. Furthermore, no "tag" device is required for users.

The system operates by detecting sharp noises such as finger clicks, and determining the 3D position of the clicks using a multilateration algorithm. This can be used to construct 3D user interfaces, whereby a person clicking their fingers in a particular region of space might cause actions such as activating a light switch, or controlling a music player. 

Demonstration videos can be found here and here (Warning: videos are ~35Mb). The audio location prototype was demonstrated at UbiComp 2004 and MobiSys 2004. To build your own audio location system, see these instructions.

Networked Surfaces

My PhD, conducted at the (now renamed) Laboratory for Communication Engineering at the University of Cambridge, was on a radical concept in local area networking known as Networked Surfaces. This network used physical surfaces such as tables or desks to provide connectivity, allowing users to enjoy the convenience and user-friendliness of wireless networking, while also providing the dedicated bandwidth and powering of devices possible with wired networks.

Unlike with cradles, objects could be placed anywhere on a Networked Surface rather than only at a specific location, and the location of objects could be determined to within centimetres, enabling applications such as automatic and dynamic association of devices based on positioning.

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Interns/Post Docs Supervised

• Boris Dragovic, Audio Location, 2003
• Tim Sohn, Place Lab, 2004
• Henoc Agbota, Audio Location, 2005
• Anders Lindgren, Haggle, 2005 (with Christophe Diot)
• Pan Hui, Haggle, 2005/6 (with Christophe Diot)
• Eben Upton, Haggle, 2006
• Meng How Lim, Haggle, 2006
• Jing Su, Haggle, 2006
• Ignas Budvytis, SenseCam, 2007 (with Alex Butler)
• Yuvraj Agarwal, Somniloquy, 2007 (with Steve Hodges)
• Adin Scannell, 2008
• Gabriela Marcu, SenseCam, 2008

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Professional Activities

Excluding reviews - too many to count :)

• Member, EPSRC Peer Review College 2006-2009
• Program Committee member, UbiComp 2009 
• Program Committee member, SIGCOMM 2009 MobiHeld Workshop
• Program Committee member, LoCA 2009 
• Program Committee member, Pervasive 2009
• Program Committee member, PerCom 2009
• Program Committee member, CCNC 2009
• Program Committee member, EuroSSC 2008
• Program Committee chair, UbiComp 2008
• Program Committee member, Pervasive 2008
• Program Committee member, Internet of Things Conference 2008
• Steering Committee member, Challenged Networks workshop series
• Program Committee member, MASS 2007
• Program Committee member, Mobiquitous 2007
• Program Committee member, MobiEval 2007 Workshop
• Demos chair, IEEE WOWMoM 2007
• Program Committee member, MobiSys 2007
• Late-breaking results chair, UbiComp 2007
• Program Committee member, IWSAWC 2007 Workshop
• Videos chair, Pervasive 2007
• Program Committee member, Pervasive 2007
• Program Committee member, IEEE ICMAN 2007 Workshop
• Organiser, SIGCOMM 2006 Workshop on Challenged Networks (CHANTS 06)
• Program Committee member, REALMAN 2006 Workshop
• Organiser, 2004 Workshop on Location-Aware Computing: Applications
• Posters Chair, UbiComp 2004
• Organiser, 2003 Workshop on Location-Aware Computing
• Publications Chair, UbiComp 2003
• Member, ACM and IEEE

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Publications

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