Place Lab: Bootstrapping Location-Enhanced Computing Anthony LaMarca Yatin Chawathe, Sunny Consolvo Jeffrey Hightower, James Scott, Ian Smith.

Place Lab: Bootstrapping Place Lab: Bootstrapping Location-Enhanced ComputingLocation-Enhanced Computing

Anthony LaMarcaAnthony LaMarca

Yatin Chawathe, Sunny Consolvo Yatin Chawathe, Sunny Consolvo

Jeffrey Hightower, James Scott, Ian SmithJeffrey Hightower, James Scott, Ian Smith

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The Goal of Place LabThe Goal of Place Lab

Enable widely available location-enhanced computing

Build a positioning system that is– Wide-scale, indoor & outdoor

Can be used everywhere

– Privacy observant, low barrier to participation

Can be used by everyone

I am here

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How does it work?How does it work?

We exploit wide-scale WiFi deployment– Urban areas have dense WiFi coverage

– WiFi base stations broadcast unique IDs

– Position WiFi devices using map of base-station-IDs to location

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Where is the data coming from?Where is the data coming from?

Build a global user-contributed RF-location mapping service– Leverage “war drivers” and WiFi clubs

– Collect trace logs of regular users

open

closed

WEP

open

closed

WEP

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DemoDemo

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J2ME / Java 1.3

Many supported platforms

Coming soon to a phone near you

Version 1.1 available at http://placelab.org

Place Lab: The ToolkitPlace Lab: The Toolkit

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Place Lab: The Research ProjectPlace Lab: The Research Project

Location sensing technologies– Using radio beacons for

positioning

Distributed Systems– Building large-scale user-

contributed dataset

Privacy and trust– Making location-based systems

compelling and safe for users

AP sightings

Regional location maps

OpenHash DHT(routing, storage)

Compute servers

AP sightings

Regional location maps

OpenHash DHT(routing, storage)

Compute servers

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Place Lab UsersPlace Lab Users

UCSD’s Active Campus Project

Trinity College, Dublin

University of Washington CSE

GUIR’s Topiary

Kelvin Institute

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ConclusionConclusion

Opportunities for collaborations– User interfaces & privacy models/mechanisms– Development of location-enhanced applications and services

Place Lab is a indoor/outdoor WiFi-based positioning system with a low barrier to participation

http://placelab.org

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Thank You!

Questions?