The technology, developed by Carnegie Mellon professors Asim Smailagic and Dan Siewiorek, is a state-of-the-art, context-aware mobile phone that can track a multitude of everyday details in a person's life–the email sent, the phone calls made and a user's location. The phone also adapts to dynamically changing environmental and psychological conditions, including monitoring heart rates and helping to determine a user's state.
In addition to manipulating ringer volume, vibration and phone alerts, Sensay also is augmented with eWatch technology, a wearable array of sensors that are so precise they can exchange sensitive electronic information during a simple handshake.
Smailagic will unveil this technology at 10:30 a.m. today in Hamburg Hall on Carnegie Mellon's Oakland campus to a delegation of officials from Paris-based French Telecom.
"The new context-aware system allows individuals to create new delivery rules specifying which information they want to see, when they can be interrupted, and which notification schemes should be used," Smailagic said. The technology can be used by both commercial and consumer markets. At present, the technology uses sensors like accelerometers, thermometers, light, microphones, and vibrator mounted on a wearable unit on the human body to provide data about the user and determine a user's state.
More than one billion consumers worldwide use cell phones daily and the new technology can account for substantial savings to business and industry.