Human Probes: Towards the Integration of Sensing in Human Activities

摘要

We introduce Human Probes, a novel approach to wide-scale sensing that considers the integration of sensing in human activities. The Human Probes approach leverages the ubiquity of mobile phones and allows mobile users to capture environmental and biological information as they go about their daily lives - working, playing, and moving (on foot, by car, by bike, or by public transport). This approach considers flows and activities of pedestrian crowds as well as various modes of their cooperation so as to complement and extend existing approaches. Furthermore, Human Probes can support urban sensing because they can provide a dynamic, easy-to-deploy sensing infrastructure in a complex urban environment where dense deployment of stationary sensing devices is not possible due to various physical and social constraints. We discuss relevant issues and research challenges to realize a meaningful socio-technical environment based on this approach.