Skip to main content

“Are You with Me?” – Using Accelerometers to Determine If Two Devices Are Carried by the Same Person

  • Conference paper
Pervasive Computing (Pervasive 2004)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 3001))

Included in the following conference series:

Abstract

As the proliferation of pervasive and ubiquitous computing devices continues, users will carry more devices. Without the ability for these devices to unobtrusively interact with one another, the user’s attention will be spent on coordinating, rather than using, these devices. We present a method to determine if two devices are carried by the same person, by analyzing walking data recorded by low-cost MEMS accelerometers using the coherence function, a measure of linear correlation in the frequency domain. We also show that these low-cost sensors perform similarly to more expensive accelerometers for the frequency range of human motion, 0 to 10Hz. We also present results from a large test group illustrating the algorithm’s robustness and its ability to withstand real world time delays, crucial for wireless technologies like Bluetooth and 802.11. We present results that show that our technique is 100% accurate using a sliding window of 8 seconds of data when the devices are carried in the same location on the body, is tolerant to inter-device communication latencies, and requires little communication bandwidth. In addition we present results for when devices are carried on different parts of the body.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. Warneke, B., Last, M., Leibowitz, B., Pister, K.S.J.: Smart Dust: Communicating with a Cubic-Millimeter Computer. IEEE Computer Magazine, 44–51 (January 2001)

    Google Scholar 

  2. Partridge, K., Dahlquist, B., Veiseh, A., Cain, A., Foreman, A., Goldberg, J., Borriello, G.: Empirical Measurements of Intrabody Communication Performance under Varied Physical Configurations. In: Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST 2001), Orlando, Florida, pp. 183–190 (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Brunette, W., Hartung, C., Nordstrom, B., Borriello, G.: Proximity Interactions between Wireless Sensors and their Application. In: Second ACM International Workshop on Wireless Sensor Networks and Applications, San Diego, California (WSNA 2003), pp. 30–37 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Wilson, A., Shafer, S.: XWand: UI for Intelligent Spaces. In: Conference on Human Factors and Computing Systems (CHI 2003), Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, pp. 545–552 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  5. Perng, J., Fisher, B., Hollar, S., Pister, K.S.J.: Acceleration Sensing Glove. In: 3rd International Symposium on Wearable Computers, San Francisco, California, pp. 178–181 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  6. Holmquist, L., Mattern, F., Schiele, B., Alahuhta, P., Beigl, M., Gellersen, H.: Smart-Its Friends: A Technique for Users to Easily Establish Connections between Smart Artefacts. In: Abowd, G.D., Brumitt, B., Shafer, S. (eds.) UbiComp 2001. LNCS, vol. 2201, p. 116. Springer, Heidelberg (2001)

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  7. Hinckley, K.: Synchronous Gestures for Multiple Persons and Computers. In: Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology, Vancouver, British Columbia (UIST 2003), pp. 149–158 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  8. Ben-Pazi, H., Bergman, H., Goldberg, J.A., Giladi, N., Hansel, D., Reches, A., Simon, E.S.: Synchrony of Rest Tremor in Multiple Limbs in Parkinson’s Disease: Evidence for Multiple Oscillators. Journal of Neural Transmission 108(3), 287–296 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Bao, L.: Physical Activity Recognition from Acceleration Data under Semi-Naturalistic Conditions. Master’s thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  10. Winter, D.: Biomechanics and Motor Control of Human Movement, 2nd edn. Wiley, New York (1990)

    Google Scholar 

  11. Lukowicz, P., Junker, H., Stäger, M., von Büren, T., Tröster, G.: WearNet: A Distributed Multi-Sensor System for Context Aware Wearables. In: Proc. of the 4th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing, Göteborg, Sweden, pp. 361–370 (2002)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Carter, C.: Tutorial Overview of Coherence and Time Delay Estimation. In: Coherence and Time Delay Estimation – An Applied Tutorial for Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation Engineers, pp. 1–23. IEEE Press, Los Alamitos (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Carter, C.: Coherence and Time Delay Estimation. Proc. of the IEEE 75, 236–255 (1987)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Shulz, M., Stattegger, K.: Spectrum: Spectral Analysis of Unevenly Spaced Paleoclimatic Time Series. Computers & Geosciences 23(9), 929–945 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Carter, C., Knap, C., Nuttall, A.: Estimation of the Magnitude-Squared Coherence Function Via Overlapped Fast Fourier Transform Processing. In: Coherence and Time Delay Estimation – An Applied Tutorial for Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation Engineers, pp. 49–56. IEEE Press, Los Alamitos (1993)

    Google Scholar 

  16. Welch, P.: The Use of Fast Fourier Transform for the Estimation of Power Spectra: A Method Based on Time Averaging Over Short, Modified Periodograms. IEEE Transactions on Audio and Electroacoustics 15(2), 70–73 (1967)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2004 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Lester, J., Hannaford, B., Borriello, G. (2004). “Are You with Me?” – Using Accelerometers to Determine If Two Devices Are Carried by the Same Person. In: Ferscha, A., Mattern, F. (eds) Pervasive Computing. Pervasive 2004. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3001. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24646-6_3

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-24646-6_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-21835-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-24646-6

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics