Researchers Develop Context-Aware Mobile Phone

Professors Asim Smailagic and Dan Siewiorek, along with a team of students from the College of Engineering, the School of Computer Science and the Human-Computer Interaction Institute, have developed a new context-aware mobile phone technology called SenSay that can keep track of many everyday details in a person's life, including email sent, phone calls made and the user's location. The phone also adapts to dynamically changing environmental and psychological conditions.

In addition to manipulating ringer volume, vibration and phone alerts, SenSay can provide remote callers with the ability to communicate the urgency of their calls, make call suggestions to users when they are idle and provide the caller with feedback on the current status of the user.

SenSay uses sensors like thermometers, light and microphones mounted in a wearable unit on the human body to provide data about the user. Industry analysts report that the new technology will not only increase data traffic on their networks, but also place the cell phone even more squarely at the center of people's daily lives.