A SYSTEM FOR CELL PHONE ANTI-THEFT THROUGH GAIT RECOGNITION

Studies show that smartphone thefts are a significant problem in the United States. [30] With many upcoming proposals to decrease the theft-rate of such devices, investigating new techniques for preventing smartphone theft is an important area of research. The prevalence of new biometric identification techniques for smartphones has led some researchers to propose biometric anti-theft measures for such devices, similar to the current fingerprint authentication system for iOS. Gait identification, a relatively recent field of study, seems to be a good fit for anti-theft because of the non-intrusive nature of passive pattern recognition in walking. In this paper, we reproduce and extend a modern gait recognition technique proposed in Cell Phone-Based Biometrics by testing the technique outside of the laboratory on real users under everyday conditions. We propose how this technique can be applied to create an anti-theft system, and we discuss future developments that will be necessary before such research is ready to be implemented in a release-quality product. Because previous studies have also centered around the ability to differentiate between individual users from a group, we will examine the accuracy of identifying whether or not a specific user is currently using a system. The system proposed in this paper shows results as high as 91% for cross-fold accuracy for some users; however, the predictive accuracy for a single day’s results ranged from 0.8% accuracy to 92.9% accuracy, showing an unreliability that makes such a system unlikely to be useful under the pressure of real-world conditions

Current state of the art and use case description on geofencing for traffic management

This report is a result of a literature review and document gathering focused on geofence use cases specific for road traffic management. It presents geofence use cases that are trialled or to be trialled, implemented use cases, as well as conceptual and potential future use cases, showing for which type of transport they are used and how geofence zones are applied or to be applied. The report was conducted in the project GeoSence – Geofencing strategies for implementation in urban traffic management and planning. It is a Joint programme initiative (JPI) Urban Europe project funded by European Union´s Horizon 2020, under ERA-NET Cofund Urban Accessibility and Connectivity and gather project partners from Germany, Norway, Sweden and UK. The goal is to present the current state of art, and describe use cases, based on the working definition of geofencing in the project, where geofence is defined as a virtual geographically located boundary, statically or dynamically defined. The study shows that for implemented and real-traffic trial use case, geofencing has been applied within private car transport, shared micro-mobility, freight and logistics, public bus transportation and ridesourcing. For the future use cases, geofencing has been tested or conceptually developed also for automated vehicles and shared automated mobility, among others. The report summarises main use cases and find them to answering to especially four challenges in traffic management: safety, environment, efficiency, and tracking and data collection. Some of the use cases however answer to several of these challenges, such as differentiated road charging, and the use cases in micro-mobility. Further, the system and functionality of the trialled and/or implemented use cases, show different types of regulation geofence use cases can be used for, from informing, assisting, full enforcement, incentivising and penalisation. Guidelines and recommendations so far form national authorities show that the existence of joint regulation or guidelines for the use of geofencing for different use cases is low – with some exceptions. Digital representation of traffic regulation will be crucial for enabling geofencing

Mind Wandering in Daily Life: A National Experience Sampling Study of Intentional and Unintentional Mind Wandering Episodes Reported by Working Adults Ages 25 – 50

Numerous researchers have investigated thinking that drifts away from what the individual was doing, thinking that is known as mind wandering. Their inquiries were often conducted in university lab settings with student participants. To learn about mind wandering in the daily life of working adults, this experience sampling study investigated intentional and unintentional mind wandering episodes as reported by working adults, ages 25–50, living across the United States. In this age frame, work and family responsibilities have increased in complexity and overlap. Using a smartphone app, participants were randomly notified to answer experience sampling surveys six times a day for up to five days. Eight questions concerned frequency, intentionality, and the descriptive characteristics of thought type, thought content, temporality, context, context demand, and emotion. Based upon 7,947 notification responses and 4,294 reported mind wandering episodes, the research findings showed that mind wandering is a common thinking experience in working adult daily life and is differentiated by intentionality, parent status, and gender. Parents reported more frequent mind wandering and intentional mind wandering episodes than nonparents. Episode thought type was most often indicated as practical thought. Episodes were more often reported as having the content related to context although out of context mind wandering episodes were also highly reported. Context demand and emotion at the time of the notification were related to mind wandering episode frequency and were further differentiated by intentionality, parent status, and gender. Working parents reported mind wandering episodes during higher demand, particularly male parents, than nonparents. By generating new knowledge about the thinking life of working adults, this study’s results and methodology contribute to the fields of leadership and change, thought research, intrapersonal and interpersonal psychology, work and family studies, and education. Future studies focused on underlying factors related to the mind wandering of working adults and the differences between parent and nonparent mind wandering may inform our understanding of working adult mind wandering. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA, https://aura.antioch.edu/, and OhioLINK ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.edu

Smart Phone Purchasing Habits among the University of New Hampshire Students

College students are more connected to technology now than ever, especially because a smart phone that has all of the capabilities of a computer is right in their pockets. This study delves into why students at the University of New Hampshire purchase their smart phones, how they use their smart phones, and how to better market toward profitable segments. The two segments found were the technology buffs, who are smart phone experts and are constantly on their devices, and the practical users who mainly use their smart phones for texting and calling. The results from the study showed that students perceived the iOS operating system to be the best with Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone following respectively. I recommend that these smart phone brands focus on the technology buffs and improve their perception among the campus to gain market share

Enhancing travel experience with the combination of information visualization, situation awareness, and distributed cognition

With the new forms of travel introduced by new technologies of transportation and communication, a satisfied travel experience could be affected by various factors before and during a trip. Especially for road trips, traveling by car provides freedom on time control while leading to more possibilities of rescheduling initial plans made under time constraints. When overwhelmed with the need for changed travel context to avoid unexpected events that will require a serious change of initial plans, travelers need to find and access helpful contextual information quickly. This is a context-related decision making process that requires amplifying human situation awareness and supporting distributed cognition, since travel information offers multiple choices. To solve this problem, I applied information visualization as the main design solution. When comparing it with a traditional representation of lists, information visualization displays the advantages of visual representation of abstract data to clarify and depict the information and amplify cognition while improving travel experience intuitively in the domain of user experience design. Therefore in this thesis I will address the approach of implementing recontextualized situation awareness, distributed cognition, and information visualization in a travel-aid system. By using both theoretical and practical design perspectives, I will discuss how to enhance travel experience with represented contextual information that users desire or expect before and during a road trip. I will also explore the new values of this design with strategic business support. Additionally, after conducting research and analysis on existing interaction design parts, I selected a smartphone app to serve as a proper platform with connected multifunctions. Briefly, I begin the thesis with a review of previous theories and aspects of travel planning, information visualization as it relates to travel, situation awareness, and distributed cognition in the design context and related smartphone apps. Then I discuss the process of identifying the specific issues to be solved or improved with a preliminary research of empirical study, followed by an interview, online survey, insights synthesis, and business model design. After a visual-system design was developed, heuristic evaluation was employed to assess the outcome. Lastly, a new round of refined design results is introduced based on outcomes of the evaluation

Multi-Dimensional-Personalization in mobile contexts

During the dot com era the word "personalisation” was a hot buzzword. With the fall of the dot com companies the topic has lost momentum. As the killer application for UMTS or the mobile internet has yet to be identified, the concept of Multi-Dimensional-Personalisation (MDP) could be a candidate. Using this approach, a recommendation of mobile advertisement or marketing (i.e., recommendations or notifications), online content, as well as offline events, can be offered to the user based on their known interests and current location. Instead of having to request or pull this information, the new service concept would proactively provide the information and services – with the consequence that the right information or service could therefore be offered at the right place, at the right time. The growing availability of "Location-based Services“ for mobile phones is a new target for the use of personalisation. "Location-based Services“ are information, for example, about restaurants, hotels or shopping malls with offers which are in close range / short distance to the user. The lack of acceptance for such services in the past is based on the fact that early implementations required the user to pull the information from the service provider. A more promising approach is to actively push information to the user. This information must be from interest to the user and has to reach the user at the right time and at the right place. This raises new requirements on personalisation which will go far beyond present requirements. It will reach out from personalisation based only on the interest of the user. Besides the interest, the enhanced personalisation has to cover the location and movement patterns, the usage and the past, present and future schedule of the user. This new personalisation paradigm has to protect the user’s privacy so that an approach supporting anonymous recommendations through an extended "Chinese Wall“ will be described

Using a Smart City IoT to Incentivise and Target Shifts in Mobility Behaviour-Is It a Piece of Pie?

The work presented in this paper is a central part of the research and development in the SUNSET project (contract No. 270228), supported by the 7th Framework Research Program funded by the European Commission. The authors also acknowledge the support of other SUNSET consortium members in helping to create and evaluate the SUNSET tripzoom system

In-company project: An integrated communication plan to increase the usage of the e-floater sharing service in Lisbon

This Master’s project is an in-company project about the micro mobility company Floatility that offers an electric micro scooter sharing service with its three-wheeled e-floater. The company figured out that most its e-floater trips were conducted by users who did three or more trips. In order to address these regular users and trigger more trips by them, it needs an effective integrated communication plan. As Floatility does not yet have a clear and structured communication plan for these regular users, the objective of this Master’s project is to develop an effective communication plan for the regular users of the e-floater sharing service in Lisbon. The users with the most trips during the three-month pilot project in Lisbon Carnide served as the target audience who were interviewed and surveyed in order to develop an integrated communication plan. Firstly, a situation analysis has been done incorporating the shared mobility market in Lisbon, Floatility’s competitors in Lisbon and the company’s efloater including its plans for the Lisbon market. Next, the integrated communication plan has been developed based on six steps proposed by Kotler and Armstrong (2012). They consist of identifying the target audience, determining the communication objectives, designing a message, choosing the right media, selecting the message source and collecting feedback from the users. Having analysed the results of the primary research with the regular users of the pilot project, eventually an implementation plan is recommended for Floatility’s operations in the entire city of Lisbon.Este projeto de mestrado é um projeto in company sobre a empresa de micro mobilidade Floatility que oferece um serviço de partilha de micro scooter elétrico com o seu e-floater de três rodas. A empresa descobriu que a maioria das suas viagens de e-floater foram realizadas por utilizadores que fizeram três ou mais viagens. Para atender a esses usuários regulares e desencadear mais viagens por eles, é necessário um plano de comunicação integrado e eficaz. Como a Floatility ainda não tem um plano de comunicação claro e estruturado para estes utilizadores regulares, o objectivo deste projecto de mestrado é desenvolver um plano de comunicação eficaz para os utilizadores regulares do serviço e-floater sharing em Lisboa. Os utilizadores que fizeram mais viagens durante os três meses de projeto piloto no Polo de Carnide, em Lisboa, serviram de público alvo e foram entrevistados de forma a desenvolver um plano de comunicação integrado. Em primeiro lugar, foi feita uma análise da situação incorporando o mercado de mobilidade partilhada em Lisboa, os concorrentes da Floatility em Lisboa e o e-floater da empresa incluindo os seus planos para o mercado de Lisboa. Em seguida, o plano de comunicação integrada foi desenvolvido com base em seis etapas propostas por Kotler e Armstrong (2012). Consistem em identificar o público-alvo, determinar os objetivos de comunicação, desenhar uma mensagem, escolher o meio de comunicação adequado, selecionar a fonte da mensagem e recolher o feedback dos utilizadores. Tendo analisado os resultados da investigação primária com os utilizadores regulares do projecto-piloto, recomenda-se eventualmente um plano de implementação para as operações da Floatility em toda a cidade de Lisboa