Trends in mobile sensors:how smartphones keep changing our life

speaker: Claudio Capobianco

Friday, November 27

CLAUDIO CAPOBIANCOSoftware Engineer, Co-founder at *HUMAN MACHINE INTERACTION*c.capobianco@snapback.io@settevolte

how many sensors?

let’s sum them up...

2 microphones2 camerasaccelerometergyroscopecompassproximityambient lightpressurebattery temperature

= TOT 11

...plus the software based sensors!

orientationstep countertilt ……= 26 listed in official doc*

*actually lot more defined by manufacturers

what are sensors for?

microphone: call

accelerometer: orientation

proximity: turn off the screen

…

repurposing!

microphone: call >>> Shazam, send messages without any connectivity, ...

accelerometer: orientation >>> gaming, step, tilt, user activity, ...

proximity: turn off the screen >>> air gesture recognition, ...

“Exaptation: A character previously shaped by natural selection for a particular function, is coopted for a new use”Gould & Vrba 1982

a little digression: exaptation

heart tracking

“A smartphone may be able to measure your heart and breathing rates, even if you’re not directly touching it”

MIT’s Media Lab 2015

driving behavior insight

personal interest or to reduce insurance costs

“A platform for building applications that harness smartphone data to measure, monitor, and improve health behaviours.”

emotionsense.org

track your happiness

“A new way of collecting weather data, making use of smartphone sensors. Our aim is to compile the world’s most comprehensive live updating map of weather conditions.”

weathersignal.com

weather forecast

problem? device fragmentation

● android operating system

● screen size

● CPU & GPU

● sensor prevalence and performances

several kinds of fragmentation

sensor prevalences

sensor performances

● battery consumption

● sampling rate

● accuracy

● wake-up / non-wake-up

● batching mode

WhatsApp uses proximity sensor when playing a voice message, in order to decide if play message with loud speaker or ear-speaker.

simple and yet...the solution does not work well on all Android devices! (no selection pressure)

case study: whatsapp & proximity sensor

Material design: visual design and interaction fragmentation

Android Compatibility programme: compatibilities issues

next future...Chip manufacturing: hardware fragmentation

efforts to solve fragmentation

compatibility definition document (CCD)

everyone should give it a look!

hardwaremanufacturer

AOSPcontributors

applicationdevelopers

an effort that involves the full stack

download the app (.APK): https://goo.gl/n2ZARB

source code: https://github.com/mksens/DeviceSpecs

test your device here:

loads of tech in our hands.loads of potentials.but what about interactions?how do all these interfaces impact to human behavior?who leads the conversation?

interfaces as transparent as none

creates safe - natural - multimodaluser experiences

Thank you!Claudio Capobianco

c.capobianco@snapback.io