The appearance of mobile devices, such as smartphones, has made it possible to develop context-based applications and services that proactively respond to user-specific activities or situations. This contextual information, that is, the specific state of the user, allows communication services companies to develop and offer new added value services, for a wide range of applications such as social networks, advertising, navigation and leisure.

Equally important are the health-related services and applications whose goal is to detect with precision the physical activity of the users in specific instances for days or even weeks. Using this information, it is possible to discover and analyse physical activity patterns, and thus help users to follow a healthier lifestyle.

The goal with this project is to study and develop highly reliable and energy efficient techniques, and explore approaches and algorithms that aggregate context, based on the statistical classification, in order to detect activity patterns. Finally, and as the mobile systems evolve, specific middleware and programming environments will be developed that make it easier to prototype the applications based on context.

The middleware and the R&D techniques developed during the project will be tested in an industrial context by Altice Labs. This validation will allow the project team to assess the reliability of the approach in a real context, and finally evaluate the possibility of technology transfer.

The INESC TEC team – composed of João M.P. Cardoso of the Centre for Information Systems and Computer Graphics (CSIG), Carlos Soares of the Centre for Enterprise Systems Engineering (CESE), João Mendes Moreira of the Laboratory of Artificial Intelligence and Decision Support (LIAAD), João Canas Ferreira of the Centre for Telecommunications and Multimedia (CTM) and José Carlos Alves of the Centre for Robotics and Autonomous Systems (CRAS) – will be in charge of researching and developing algorithms to detect the activities of the user, with a particular emphasis on low energy consumption and high precision detection, context aggregation techniques, and a programming environment that makes it easier to prototype context-aware applications.

The project is funded by the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation, ERDF, and the Portuguese funding agency Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT).

Other than INESC TEC and Altice Labs, the project also features INESC-ID as partner.

More information on the CONTEXWA here.

The INESC TEC researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with UP-FEUP.

INESC TEC, June 2016