QSP1 Relative Position and Speed Estimations using a Smart Phone Accelerometer
QSP2 Weighing Scale as part of an Internet of Things (IoT)
QSP3 Navigation using the Smart Phone Magnetometer
QSP4 A Rule-based Travel Incentive Market-Place Service
QSP5 An Indoor Positioning and User Guidance System using Physical Annotation Technology Mobile Client
QSP6 An Indoor Positioning and User Guidance System using Physical Annotation Technology Server
QSP7 Where is the Nearest Bus-Stop or Metro Station to this Location?
QSP8 Message-Oriented Middleware that directly supports (MJPEG) Video Streaming
QSP9 Privacy Protection for mobility profiling of IoT users
QSP1, R, IoT phone app,, smart cities
QSP2, D, (H/W), IoT, healthy living
QSP3, R, IoT phone app, smart cities
QSP4, D, Phone App, IS, smart cities
QSP5/=, 6 , D, smart cities (to be approved)
QSP7, D, phone app, smart cities
QSP8, D, IoT of Physical Environment
QSP9, R, IoT (security Mgt)
Type: Research:
strong research element plus some implementation
Description
Motivation: Although,
GPS is widely used to estimate positions and speed for a range of
location-based services such as outdoor navigation, there are many situations
where there is no GPS signal because we have no line of sight to sufficient
transmitters, such as when travelling inside a moving vehicle or building, or
when using underground transport. This project will explore how to use the
3-axis accelerometer inbuilt into a Smart Phone in order to provide estimates
of position changes and speed.
Tasks / Objectives
1. Undertake a survey of related work that critically describes best-practice and limitations of state of the art methods to derive distance or location and speed based upon accelerometer readings
2. Design a computation model of derived distance or location and speed based upon accelerometer measurements including error estimates
3. Implementation of this model for an Android Smart Phone
4. Design and validate experiments of smart phone accelerometer use for distance or location and speed estimations.
Outcomes
A survey of the use of smart phone accelerometer for position and speed estimation
A mini-report that documents a computational model for accelerometer based position and speed estimation
A validated software Implementation of this model for an Android Smart Phone
Skills required:
Mathematics to
build a model that derives position and velocity from position changes.
Software
programming using Java but HTML-5 may work to a limited extent too.
N.B. The preferred mobile target device is
Android not iPhone
Motivation: To expand Things that can be used as part of an Internet of Things, e.g., recipe or weight guide interlinks with weighing scale to guide user about how your own weight is changing respect to the norm, or to help weigh out cooking ingredients in order to following a cooking recipe.
Design Issues: there are several ways to design and implement a weighing-scale interface to acquire weighing data. First, one can either hacking a network interface to an existing digital scale (e.g., see http://code.google.com/p/casainho-projects/wiki/SmartScale or http://www.open-electronics.org/wi-fi-body-scale-with-arduino/ ). Second, one can build a weighing scale from scratch, i.e. using digital load sensors. Third, simplest?, one can use a mobile phone camera to take 1 or more images or video of the weighing scale in operational use and transform this into a numerical values representing the weight.
Tasks
1. Specify the application and system requirements for the use of weighing scale
2. Research and critically analysis the pros and cons of different types of networked digital weighting scales including how commercial ones are built.
3. Design and build a build a Weighing Scale using 1 of the methods outlined in the description and based upon the outcome of the analysis in Task 1
4. Apply and evaluate the weighing scale for use to fulfil the requirements given in task 1
Outcomes
A survey of networked weighing scale designs and implementations
A report that documents the design and implementation of the weighing scale
A validated hardware and software Implementation of the weighing scale
Skills needed:
Electronics design and implementation experience in order to build the networked digital interface or scale - but could use the mobile phone camera design and avoid this (?)
Some software programming to acquire the data, store it and to write the application (Java preferred).
Type: Research:
strong research element plus some implementation
Description
Motivation:
Generally transceivers sensors such as
GPS can be used to provide a unique signature of the position in an
environment. GPS has limitations high energy-consumption and preventing the
signature in some environments such as being underground, deep indoors etc.
Urban areas with buildings and transport infrastructure constructed out of
reinforced concrete and steel structures have unique, spatially-varying ambient
magnetic fields that vary from location to location. Because these artificial
structures cause anomalies or fluctuations in the surrounding or ambient
magnetic field, they can be used for positioning and navigation.
Method Outline:
The mobile phone magnetometer can be used to sense these magnetic field
fluctuations. If these fluctuations are unique, like a fingerprint, they can be
converted in a magnetic field map, also called a radiomap,
of an area. A fingerprinting algorithm such as Rabin's fingerprinting algorithm
can be used to map an arbitrarily large data item (such as spatial map) to a
much shorter bit string (magnetic field) values.
See
http://www.gmat.unsw.edu.au/snap/publications/lib_etal2012b.pdf
Tasks / Objectives
1. Undertake a survey of related work that critically describes best-practice and limitations of state of the art methods, including fingerprinting to determine locations based upon magnetometer readings.
2. Acquire data using a smart phone magnetometer when someone follows a limited number of paths in an area and then use this data to construct a magnetic field map for one or more indoor areas that is overlaid onto the floor plan of that indoor area.
3. Implement the radiomap and a fingerprinting algorithm in software for use to map map locations to unique (?) magnetometer measurements.
4. Design and validate experiments of smart phone magnetometer use for location determination.
Outcomes
A survey of the use of magnetometer use for position estimation
A mini-report that documents a computational model for magnetometer based positioning based upon radiomaps and fingerprinting that has relates to one or more indoor areas.
A validated software Implementation of this model for use by an Android Smart Phone
Skills required:
Mathematics to
build a radiomap and fingerprinting model that
derives position from magnetic field changes.
Software
programming of the magnetometer using Java but HTML-5 may work to a limited
extent too.
N.B. The preferred mobile target device is
Android not iPhone
Description:
Motivation:
A main aim of many city and transport authorities is to attain more efficient
and sustainable urban road travel by offering individual travellers
the right kind of incentives. An effective incentive is one that motivates
individual travellers to change their travel behaviour so as to achieve the overall authorities goals,
i.e., to reduce car use during peak commute times, to protect the environment
through reducing CO2 emissions, to promote well-being through using more
human-powered mobility during urban travel and to facilitate personal safety.
One of the most common types of incentives system is a reward or points based
system where points are gained if an incentive or challenge has been achieved,
e.g., gain 100 points if you walk 1KM as part of your journey to work.
Method Outline: The Incentive Market-Place Service supports 3 basic service functions, firstly, to create and issue Incentives to selected users. Here an incentive is defined as a travel rule; the users who receive an incentive are defined by another type of rule; secondly, to monitor or model each user's travel to examine if conditions are met to issue a reward - this is also modeled as a (event-condition-action) rule; thirdly to issue the rewards to the travelers, i.e., an updated points total.
A rule base can be built using an
open-source rule-base such as Drools, see www.jboss.org/drools.
Tasks
Analyse and research incentive-based travel systems and application requirements. Consider also how incentives may vary for different types of traveller, non-Chinese visitor versus Chinese visitor.
Specify a rich set of realistic rules for travel incentives and point-based rewards represented declaratively using a standard representation (e.g., XML, JSON) that is not hard-coded in the software
Build a Drools open-source rule-based and develop an associated travel application for it that monitors actual journeys or simulates journeys to generate the travel conditions that are used to check if incentives are met and issues points.
Evaluate the actual or simulated use of travel incentives on a set of users.
Outcomes
Analysis (report) of incentive-based travel systems and application requirements
A Drools software implementation of a rule-base for travel incentives
An evaluation (report) of the use of a travel incentives application.
Skills/Resources needed: Ability to use Drools an Object-Oriented Rule Engine for Java and to develop a Java based application for it.
Motivation:
Finding your way around as a visitor in unknown places, at new events, can at
times be a challenging task, especially in highly complex buildings. Buildings
and rooms can be instrumented using QR-codes (these look like 2D black-and
white dotted squares) or NFC tags that can act as focal-points to draw new
users to specific locations and to identify if and when users interact at those
locations, e.g., to find out if and when a user went near to where a particular
piece of electronics equipment is, or interacted with a particular demonstration
at another location. Each user can scan or read the tag placed on the side of a
room and interpret it. The tag ID can either be decoded to a Web URL to get
further information (assuming the user has a data connection for their device)
or contain a short message.
Method Outline:
See tasks
Tasks:
Research the use of QR-code versus
NFC tags.
Develop an App, not necessarily a
mobile App, to create the associated content for, and link this, to QR-code
and/or NFC tags. Enable this content to be offered via a Web server to be
retrieved by a mobile Web client.
Develop a mobile app as a tag reader
to read, either or both of these tags at specific locations, to decode them to
retrieve the annotation information associated with the tag, present the tag
information and record any comment or response to the tagged content on the
device along with metadata such as the tag ID or time.
(Time permitting) Create a Map display for the tags and offer it via a Web server so that a user can also download the map to show where tags are located.
Outcomes
An Android Mobile App that can read
tags, retrieve their content and store information about the interaction with
the tag
A Web service that can be used to
create tagged content and make this available to mobile Web clients
A report on the research,
development and validation of the combined mobile app and Web service
Skills/Resources needed: Android phone (with NFC support), Java or HTML5, JQuery, JavaScript use; understanding of databases application design and user interface design.
Cost of some tags
Motivation: Organising a new event in a new indoor space, for visitors
to find their way around and to interact with it at multiple locations, is a
challenging task. Buildings and rooms can be instrumented using QR-codes (these
look like 2D black-and white dotted squares) or NFC tags that can act as
focal-points to draw new users to specific locations and to identify if and
when users interact at those locations, e.g., to find out if and when a user
went near to where a particular piece of electronics equipment is, or interacted
with a particular demonstration at another location. Each user can scan or read
the tag placed on the side of a room and interpret it. The tag ID can either be
decoded to a Web URL to get further information (assuming the user has a data
connection for their device) or contain a short message.
Method Outline:
see tasks.
Tasks:
Build a
back-end database to define
and store tag information and any tagged content to allow organisers
in order to create tags; to store a floor and building plan; to upload of locations
the NFC or QR-code tags that are placed in the building with reference to the
plan.
Build a Web service for mobile
clients that act as tag readers to allow users to interact with the database
and retrieved the tagged content and store any comments about the tagged
content.
Create experiments and evaluate the users' interaction
with the tags in the indoor space.
(Optional, time permitting) Specify
and build an application to analyse the data
concerning users' interactions with the tagged content.
Outcomes
A working back-end service
implemented as a database that supports the management of tagged content
A Web client and server to allow an
application to read and respond to tags
A report of the evaluation of the
system by users
Skills/Resources needed: Android phone (with NFC support), Java or HTML5, JQuery, JavaScript use; understanding of databases application design and user interface design.
Cost of some tags
N.B Project is similar to 2013-14 QSP6 The project was specified as a single project but the comment was that it seemed too complex for one. Parts do overlap in that they require R&D of a mobile app but there are significant differences and the projects are independent of each other.
Description
Motivation: There are now a variety of core travel information services that enable travellers to locate where they are and to navigate to a destination using a map, including both many commercial and open-source offerings. GPS software enables travellers to know where they are. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) provide the information to generate maps of areas.
Method Outline: This project will seek to leverage open data initiatives (ODI) and open source software (OSS) to develop an app that uses GPS and GISs to find the nearest bus-station or metro station or both (an interchange) with respect to one or more specified, current, future departure or current or future destination location on a map. An example ODI that provide information from a GIS about London's bus-stops and metro stations is available from Transport for London (TfL), see www.tfl.gov.uk/developers. Example open-source GIS map software is that from openstreetmap, see http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Software
This project seeks to develop a mobile app for either London and or Beijing for International visitors, which allows these visitors to find out where the Nearest Bus-Stop or Metro Station is to a specified Location. This location may also be part of a location track for the scenario where someone who is on a bus may want to find out at which later bus-stop there in an interchange to nearby a metro station.
Tasks
Specify and develop an Android mobile app to sense and acquire the current or a different context or situation, e.g., time, location, destination.
Extend the Android mobile app from Task 1 to query a GIS to find the nearest specified bus stop or metro station to a single location or to locations as part of a location track, then to match these to find a nearest bus-stops or metro stations in one city (Beijing or London)
(Optional, Time permitting) to match locations to bus-stops or metro stations for a 2nd city's GIS (London or Beijing)
Outcomes
Mobile App Software that can match a single location or locations in a track to find any nearest bus-stops or metro stations
Project report that documents the requirements, design and implementation of this Mobile App
Skills: Java, Android Mobile phone app development
Description
Message-oriented middleware (MOM) enables distributed applications and distributed systems in heterogeneous environments to communicate by message exchange and supports a multiple publisher-subscriber or pub-sub paradigm. The pub-sub paradigm is a many to many model that permits an efficient dissemination of messages across a distributed system and can scale up to support many concurrent clients. The main standard protocol used by MOMs to support multiple pub-sub communication is AQMP (Advanced Message Queuing Protocol) supported by implementations such as Apache Qpid, see http://qpid.apache.org/, Conventionally, MOMs focus on high volume text message exchange. The Aim of this project is to investigate and develop support in a Qpid extension for many to many video streaming using the MJPEG protocol.
Tasks
Survey of MOM based video streaming and the use of MJPEG
Development of a Qpid MOM that supports the many-to-many pub-sub exchange of MJPEG videos.
Validation of the MJPEG Qpid MOM using specified tests or an application
Outcomes
Survey of MOM based video streaming and the use of MJPEG
Software demonstrator a Qpid MOM that supports the many-to-many pub-sub MJPEG exchange.
Skills
Ability to download and install Apache Qpid
Java programming to develop the MJPEG exchange support.
Type: Research:
strong research element plus some implementation
Description
As an enabler for
the vision of the Internet of Things (IoT) , there is an increasing capability
to sense and profile humans in many different ways as they move in the physical
world to enhance information services, e.g., for smart transport and healthy
living.. This includes profiling humans via a variety of wearable or
accompanied mobile devices, e.g., smart phones, wrist-bands, shoes, glasses,
and via devices fixed into the infrastructure, e.g., smart travel card readers
that record when someone enters and leaves a public transport station or
vehicle, e.g., a bus.
Much of this
information is recorded to enhance such travel information services for the
user making these easier to adapt to the mobility context (e.g., travel mode,
location, time). This information may get permanently logged on 3rd
party data centres and data mined. However, there are security concerns in
trusting that the exchange of data is secure and that users' privacy is not being infringed without
agreement from the user. Hence, the main objective of this project is to
analyse the range of urban IoT mobile and fixed devices for security threats to
user privacy, to compare and contrast different schemes to reduce or avoid
these security threats and validate more than one of these schemes in an
application.
Tasks / Objectives
1. Undertake a survey of related work that critically describes best-practice and limitations of state of the art threats and safeguards to fixed and mobile devices used to profile users' mobility for transport and healthy living services
2. Design and implement a computation model of threats to mobile users' privacy and safeguards to reduce these threats.
3 Design and validate experiments to validate that the safeguards can reduce the threats.
Outcomes
A critical survey of threats and safeguards to users' privacy when invoking transport and healthy living information services that need to profile user mobility.
A validated safeguard model to mitigate against threats that invade the privacy to mobile users' profiles.
Skills required:
Mathematics
or simulation to build a threat and safeguard model and validate it.
(optional)
validation through Software programming.