Wednesday, September 18, 2013

Ready for the context aware, all knowing digital assistant i.e your smart phone?

There is no doubt that our smart phones already know a lot about us. A typical smart phone like Samsung Galaxy S3 or Apple iPhone 5 has several sensors including  accelerometer(for measuring acceleration), gyroscope(orientation), proximity sensor(detecting presence of nearby objects), GPS(position), compass( direction), barometer(height), light-meter(ambient light) and mic(ambient noise).
Besides that, it is with us 24X7, recording our schedule(alarms, calendar, email...), information about our friends and family(Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+...), has access to our communications(WhatsApp, Hangouts, Messenger...) and knows our preferences for information, music, videos, food, shopping etc.(Google Search, YouTube, Google Music...).

Thus, our-smart phone  knows our surroundings and it knows about us and has enough processing power(brain) to make sense of this knowledge. Think about how the smart phone works and it's very close to how we humans act in our daily life, continuously trying to make sense of our surroundings and achieving a balance between the surroundings and our own preferences and priorities!

Computing systems such as smart phones are "context aware" systems. In computer science research,context is “any information that can be used to characterize the situation of an entity. An entity is a person, place, or object that is considered relevant to the interaction between a user and an application, including the user and applications themselves”. And a context aware system is one which uses “context to provide relevant information and/or services to the user, where relevancy depends on the user’s task”.(Day, Anind K., "Understanding and Using Context" (2001). Human-Computer Interaction Institute. Paper 34.)

Consider the two latest smart phones: iPhone 5S and Motorola X with X8 mobile computing system. iPhone 5S sports a M7 co-processor and Motorola X8 sports a contextual computing core specifically designed for performing computations related to context awareness.

As per Apple: “M7(co processor) knows when you’re walking, running, or even driving. For example, Maps switches from driving to walking turn-by-turn navigation if, say, you park and continue on foot. Since M7 can tell when you’re in a moving vehicle, iPhone 5s won’t ask you to join Wi-Fi networks you pass by. And if your phone hasn’t moved for a while, like when you’re asleep, M7 reduces network pinging to spare your battery.”

And as per Google: “The Motorola X8’s contextual computing processor jumps into action when you need to take that photo fast. It uses the accelerometer in the phone to detect motion, and checks the ambient light and proximity sensors to see if the phone’s out of your pocket. And, only then does it fire up the gyroscope to recognize that simple twist of your wrist that means you’re ready to shoot. Never miss the perfect shot again. The Motorola X8’s contextual computing processor knows when Droid is in your pocket, bag or even face down, and the display only lights up the pixels it needs when you’re ready to look.”

Are you ready for the context aware, all knowing digital assistant i.e your smart phone?

1 comment:

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