Mobile Sensors or Smartphones Sensors based Ubiquitous Computing

The Smartphones that we use in our day to day lives are filled with a colony of sensory chips or if I compare it to human body it is filled with a number of organs.

In case of human body each organ plays a vital role in keeping us alive and in making our body functional. In the same way the sensors in smartphones today keeps a streamlined flow of informational stats to the smartphones' processor or to the apps in order to keep that particular functionality in the running mode.

Whenever we hold a phone in our hand we do not realize that this marvel of technology has the power to provide us with information that we unknowingly miss or is continuously missed or not interpreted by our mind. As I have mentioned in my earlier post about the "Future of Mobile Computing", Mobile Devices will largely define all the future major innovations in the consumer based computing industry, but in this post I will tell you that how will it be possible to start with providing personalized processed info to an individual and then gradually move on to socially or globally indicative aspects of the processed information from these "Smart Devices".

Taking the example of the recently launched Samsung Galaxy S4 smart computing hand held device/phone. I would like to notify that it is capable of giving us 14 types of sensory data. Please refer list below:

1. Time
2. Location
3. Altitude of the device
4. Gravity
5. Orientation
6. Atmospheric Pressure
7. Proximity
8. Magnetic Field
9. Linear Acceleration
10. Relative Humidity
11. Rotation Vector
12. Gyroscope based Directional Sense
13. Temperature
14. Light--> Indoor/Outdoor (RGB & Brightness Sensor data)

But the irony is that the phone does not have a single application that can accumulate data from these sensors as a combined input mechanism in order to give a really personalized & "Üseful" analysed "Info". 

Think of the possibility that if we can get information from all these sensors for all the activities we do in only a time frame of 24 hours. It is astounding to know this meaningful information can be used to provide us inputs regarding our vehicle's fuel consumption mileage, our health stats, our emotional status, our location based risks, our social status, predict near future events, alert notifications in cases of emergency, delivery of required info at right time, our most productive time period of the day and numerous other informational feeds. 

If we move forward leaving behind the informational impact on a single being, if we can process the data from a group of individuals suppose a class of 15 quantum mechanics students. The teacher can quickly grasp the pointers which left student's lose interest and which made them more enthusiastic. I mean to say if we combine the sensory data of a group of individuals it will provide us the info that can help prevent epidemics or can help in promoting an Ad-Campaign. 

Now if we can combine the data across states we can have global demographic data and real time traffic stats to help build new highways. The Micro to Macroscopic view to the benefits of this technology innovation can bring into our lives is endless. 

I have begun working on defining a computing algorithm for this type of sensory data utilization for ubiquitous computing. If the interested ignited minds like to contribute then they are welcome. 

At the last I would like you to think on the lines of studying the effects of various kinds of informational feeds we take inside our minds via TV, Mobile, PCs etc and look into the possibility of delivering personalized educative content to people in shorter digestible amounts so that they can inch closer to the full grasp of the related topics. This application will be useful in defining an ubiquitous knowledge sharing mechanism by utilizing user patterns of social or informational feeds via various channels.

Future of Mobile Computing - Consumers and Manufacturers Perspective

Mobile Computing has risen way above since it was first offered to consumers. Initial versions of Mobile Computing offerings used remotely operated objects, embedded devices, laptops, handheld palmtops, digital watches  and many more items which made the consumers witness the advances and advantages of Mobile Computing.

But nowadays consumers are empowered with smartphones which have easily become the substitutes for desktops or even laptops. Laptops and desktops are being gradually outnumbered by Tablet PCs, Tablets, Smartphones and UltraBooks. These devices have drastically got reduced in size and have immensely grown in the computational power they offers. There is a merger of two futuristic technologies namely Mobile and Cloud Computing to virtually monitor, offer and shift all the computing to mobile/movable devices which are able to run on software that is remotely located in a distant cloud based server. 

The present Mobile Computers or Handheld Devices or Smartphones/Tablet PCs etc offer an ever increasing amount of hardware in terms of its processing, storage or connectivity abilities. A generic solution is available to the consumers from which they have to choose in order to select a piece of product that would more or less suit their needs. Rather the global trend sees a common trend of selecting the latest mobile phone from the manufacturers that is either recently launched or is from a consumer favorite brand like Apple or Samsung or HTC.

But if we look into the future I would see a major shift in what people would like to chose in terms of what kind of Mobile Smartphone or Tablet they would like to buy. In future it would be like a building or configuring a Smartphone down to the lowest hardware/software levels to suit a particular consumer needs. 

Gone will be days when we would be buying a pre-configured phone which the Manufacturer thinks is the best choice for us. We will be able to configure or phones and suit them to our needs. We would fill them with those usability features that would truly help us in our jobs or daily chores. Recently Motorola has taken a brave move in offering phones to UK Consumers which can be pre-configured as per user's needs.

In future we would also see a major shift from limb-held devices to limb-mounted devices. Like we would not be wearing a smart watch but it would be mounted on our wrists as a mounted or embedded component in our skin or by any other prosthetic means. 

Also we would be seeing an era of ubiquitous computing and a mobile computing environment which will be self aware of the surroundings and would be smart or intelligent enough to even predict that we have chances of catching cold in case we step into cold water under some jittery health condition. 

We are soon approaching the future that all the computing we see will transform itself from a stationary technology to Mobile Technologies. All the Computing will see a major shift from Stationed technology centers to Mobile and Ubiquitous Technologies. 

There is lot of scope for innovators to pre-approach and visualize the scenarios to offer newer and smarter services and in the way take advantage of the financial boom it has in it stakes.