"Are You with Me?" - Using Accelerometers to Determine If Two Devices Are Carried by the Same Person

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

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2004
• Where: PERVASIVE
• Authors: Jonathan Lester, Blake Hannaford, Gaetano Borriello
• Keywords: Applied Computing, Expensive Accelerometers, Low-cost Mems Accelerometers, PERVASIVE 2004, Ubiquitous Computing Devices