November 29, 2007 - Andreas Savvides

Title: The BehaviorScope System: A Framework for Detecting Patterns and Behaviors with Distributed Sensors

Abstract:
Although sensor networks are gradually finding their way into commercial products, their applications are still mostly limited to data collection and wire replacement. Part of this limitation is attributed to the lack of systematic frameworks and appropriate sensors that actively interpret and consume sensor data instead of merely transporting it. This talk will describe our current efforts towards building the BehaviorScope, an event-driven network of heterogeneous sensor nodes that tries to observe human behaviors with a precision that is accurate enough to provide meaningful services. Three main components of the BehaviorScope will be presented (sensing, interpretation and middleware) in the context of our driver application, assisted living. We will discuss the requirements, deployment experiences and challenges in data interpretation. With these we will argue that sensing and data interpretation for these types of applications should be well understood before any networking decisions can be made.