WISDM News

Below are the News Item Summaries. Click on any of the titles to jump to the detailed description of the news items, which are provided after the summary list.

WISDM News Items/Milestones (Summaries only)

WISDM News Items/Milestones (with Details)

• July 21, 2010: Biometric identification paper accepted for publication
  The WISDM paper "Cell Phone-Based Biometric Identification" is accepted for publication by the IEEE Fourth International Conference on Biometrics: Theory, Applications and Systems. The paper will be presented at the conference, which is held September 27-29, 2010 in the Washington DC area.
• July 14, 2010: Dr. Weiss receives Google faculty research grant to support WISDM
  Google Inc. awarded Dr. Weiss a $25,000 grant to support work on the WISDM project, through the Google research award program.
• July 5, 2010: WISDM applications posted to Android marketplace
  The first WISDM application is posted to the Android marketplace, so that anyone with an Android phone can download it. The application instruments the cell phone so that the accelerometer and GPS data is transmitted to the WISDM server for analysis. In the future we will expand the app to collect other sensor information and ultimately to provide functionality to the user, such as generating an activity profile or performing biometric identification.
• June 2, 2010: First WISDM paper accepted for publication
  The first WISDM paper, Activity Recognition using Cell Phone Accelerometers, is accepted for publication by the Fourth International Workshop on Knowledge Discovery from Sensor Data. The paper will be presented on July 25, 2010 in Washington DC.
• April 7, 2010: WISDM presentation at the first FS2RW workshop
  Jennifer Kwapisz presents much of the material from her undergraduate honor's thesis at the first FS2RW workshop (Fordham STEM Student-Faculty Research Workshop).
• March 30, 2010: Three HTC Hero (Android) cell phones purchased with data plans
  WISDM obtains 3 HTC Hero Android-based cell phones with cell service and data plans from Sprint. Unlike our Nexus One phones, which were purchased without cell service, these phones will be able to communicate with our WISDM server via the cell phone network. Our initial focus will be to use these cell phones to collect GPS data from students on campus and then mine this GPS data.
• March 11, 2010: Decision made to enter area of GPS data mining
  The WISDM team members decided to expand the research areas being investigated beyond biometric identification and activity recognition and to begin mining GPS data in earnest. Our initial goal is to learn as much as possible about the Fordham College of Rose Hill campus by tracking the GPS coordinates of students with GPS-enabled Android-based cell phones. Thus, cell phones will be used as a dynamic sensor network.
• March 5, 2010: First sensor data saved and retrieved from Nexus One.
  Using code we developed, we were able to save sensor data from the Nexus One onto a file on the phone and later retrieve the file via a USB connection. The data collection process is controlled using an intutitive graphical user interface that runs on the phone, radically simplifying the process, and reducing required, to collect data from our subjects. We are now ready to restart our data collection from human subjects.
• February 25, 2010: Fordham College of Rose Hill approves funds for WISDM equipment
  FCRH agrees to provide funds to purchase equipment for the WISDM project. This will be used mainly to purchase Android-based cell phones for the students working on the project. These phones may also be used for a future course in mobile applications development that Dr. Weiss is developing.
• February 24, 2010: Dr. Weiss' Fordham Faculty Research Grant for WISDM approved.
  Dr. Weiss' Faculty Research Grant "Person and Activity Identification and Characterization using Mobile Sensor Accelerometer Data" is approved. This $12,000 grant provides funding for student research, a web server for data collection, and several cell phones.
• February 20, 2010: WISDM obtains first wireless hardware.
  WISDM acquires 3 Nexus One phones, the Android-based cell phones sold directly by Google. This allows us to realistically test our code, rather than just running it on an Android software emulator. These phones are purchased "unlocked", meaning that they do not come with any cell phone plan. Nontheless, the sensor data can be stored locally and later retrieved or the data can be transmitted by WiFi for further analysis.
• January 10: Android phones selected over iPhone.
  A key motivation for the WISDM project is that powerful wireless devices, packed with multiple sensors, are becomming ubiquitious. Thus our hardware platform must be based on a popular mass-marketed device. This meant moving away from the Sunspot, a research-only device. Our initial plan was to move to the iPhone, the popular cell phone from Apple. However, we quickly realized that the Android cell phones would make a superior platform, mainly because Android, the operating system for these phones, is open-source, free, and easier for application development. We believe that ultimately Android devices will also have a larger market share than the iPhone.

• December 15, 2009: WISDM-related undergraduate honor's thesis successfully defended.
  Jennifer Kwapisz successfully defends undergraduate honor's thesis on "Person and Activity Identification and Characterization using Mobile Sensor Accelerometer Data." Jennifer's thesis applied data mining methods to the acclerometer data from SunSpot devices and shows that by mining this data we can accurately identify a user based on his/her movements and also identify the basic physical activity that they are performing (walking, running, climbing stairs).
• September 12, 2009: Fordham IRB approves WISDM data collection on human subjects.
  While the WISDM project sometimes passively collects data as users perform their normal daily activities, it also requires some human subjects to perform specific activities, such as walking, jogging, and climbing stairs, so that we have some labeled data for supervised learning. Because of the potential impact that this can have on our subjects, we followed university policy and obtained permission from the Institutional Review Board.
• May 21, 2009: First SunSpot accelerometer data collected and analyzed.
  Sam Moore successfully retrieves and processes acceleromter data from a SunSpot device.
• May 11, 2009: SunSpot data mining project discussed, effectively the start of WISDM.
  This was essentially the first formal meeting where we discussed mininig accelerometer data. The immediate goal was to have a project ready for Sam Moore, who had research funding from FCRH.