An Experimental Hardware Extension Platform for Mobile Devices in Smart Spaces

摘要

Mobile devices will increasingly assume a central role in the user interaction with smart environments. Currently there is an intense research interest on how to use mobile devices to make this interaction intuitive for non-expert users. For this reason, a number of new hardware enhancements are proposed. However, prototyping new hardware technologies and interfacing mobile devices can be a tedious and time-consuming task. In this paper, we present the Smart Sleeve, an extensible experimental platform that allows the easy addition of new sensing and communication technologies to mobile phones to facilitate research in pervasive computing. The Smart Sleeve comprises of a core system which can be extended with add-on modules that offer the new functionality. We present our experience designing and building the smart sleeve and some interesting add-on modules that add example functionalities, such as a "touch"-interface (Near Field Communication), location-awareness (indoor and outdoor location sensing), and motion (robotics) to commercially available mobile devices.