CSR: Small: Infrastructure-free Human Context Awareness with a Wearable Sensing and Computing System

Oklahoma State University, Stillwater OK

Investigators

Abstract

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). The major objective of this project is to develop the fundamental theoretical framework and algorithms that realize human context awareness in an infrastructure-free fashion and validate them through physical experiments using a body sensor network. This new human context-awareness approach will open up many new research opportunities in pervasive computing, as well as human-computer interaction and human-robot interaction. This project will have many societal impacts. First, the research results can be applied to track and monitor emergency responders, therefore significantly improving the operation efficiency and personnel safety. Second, this project will benefit health research and health care practices. Being able to monitor human's activity and location in a daily setting will enable researchers to study many health problems related to human behaviors. When used by physicians to monitor their patients or elderly people, it can greatly improve the accuracy of disease diagnosis and human health assessment. The proposed research and education integration activities will help boost the enrollment and retention rate in the ECEN program at Oklahoma State University. The proposed outreach activities will stimulate prospective and current college students, especially Native American, female students, to pursue degrees or careers in science and engineering.