Being: BEhavior Inference via wireless minING

In several fields of computing there is today the notion that people-centricity is a form of Internet user empowerment, which is affecting social structures in a multitude of ways. For instance, from a technological perspective, it is affecting the way the Internet is devised from the design of its infrastructure, to the way that data has been transmitted. This is giving rise to new forms of communication, where device-to-device communication takes advantage of the natural wireless medium and of opportunities to transmit, even when internet connectivity is intermittent.

Adding to this, most mobile devices today are also sensorial devices, capable of capturing context around us, be it from a network or from a personal perspective.

BEING is a SITI - COPELABS project focused on contextualization derived from data captured via wireless networks, and which today any device overhears. BEING expects to contribute to the development of pervasive wireless solutions, as well as studies in mining in wireless networks, to assist in a better and non-intrusive inference of human behavior, from an individual and collective perspective.

BEING considers behaviour inference to be a product of three main aspects: I) passive sensing (roaming context); ii) routine and activities (human context); iii) and contextual information (affinities and similarities). Such behavior inference is to be performed with the owners of sensorial devices being agnostic and not disturbed with any sensing activities, and focusing on adequate activity classification modeling, considering models which can incorporate sensing fusion (more than one sensor and the data correlation towards the prediction of e.g., activities).

Hence, BEING is focused on investigating and creating pervasive wireless sensing solutions in order to support the development of large-scale personalized sensing systems where sensorial data may be collected and shared based on people’s social behaviour and interests.

The BEING project is a follow-up of the SITI COPELABS CitySense project.