Towards Design Guidelines for Participatory Sensing Campaigns

Sasank Reddy
Advisor: Deborah Estrin and Mani Srivastava

Monday, May 10, 2010 at 10:00am
Engr. IV Maxwell Room 57-124

Abstract:
The rapid adoption of mobile phones over the last decade has enabled a new sensing paradigm - participatory sensing - where individuals act as sensors by using their mobile phones for data collection. Participatory sensing relies on the sensing capabilities and networking support of mobiles phones along with the spatial and temporal coverage and interpretive abilities provided by the individuals that operate them. If successfully coordinated, participants involved in data collection can open up new possibilities in understanding social and physical processes relevant to the interests of individuals, groups, and communities. Realizing a vision of sensing that is widespread and truly participatory poses critical technology challenges. This work details a mechanism to recruit individuals to perform particular data collections. The recruitment framework considers the following elements to select data collectors: (a.) the availability of participants in terms of activity, spatial, and temporal contexts, (b.) the reputation of participants as data collectors, and (c.) the resource and incentive costs associated with participants to enable and motivate contributions. A series of deployments related to sustainability are used to show the utility of the recruitment service.

Biography:
Sasank Kambham Reddy completed his undergraduate degree in Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2002. From 2002-2005, he worked as a Software Developer at Radiant Systems concentrating on point of sale and fuel controller applications. He joined the Networked and Embedded Systems Laboratory, UCLA and completed his MS in Electrical Engineering in 2006. He is currently pursuing his PhD with the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, UCLA and is a recipient of the Dissertation Year Fellowship from 2009-2010. His research interests include participatory mobile systems, information visualization, and scalable web applications.