Platys: from position to context

In this week's ebiquity meeting (11am Tue, 10/19) Radhika Dharurkar, Pramod Jagtap and Dr. Laura Zavala will discuss our current work on the Platys project. Platys is a collaborative research project between UMBC, North Carolina State, and Duke Universities. The project will develop a high-level notion of 'context' that exploits the capabilities of next generation networks to enable applications that deliver better user experiences. In particular, it exploits mobile devices—always with a user -- to capture key elements of context: the user's location and, through localization, characteristics of the user’s environment. Current practice captures location at the level of position -- as geospatial coordinates. But what matters for experience is the user’s place: a location in conceptual terms such as “at home,” “jogging,” or “grocery shopping” -- descriptions that combine positions with activities, environmental properties, and the activities of other nearby people.