Abstract

Location-Aware Mobile and Sensor Computing

Location-awareness is likely to become an important aspect of many future applications, especially in the areas of mobile and sensor computing. Although the Global Positioning System (GPS) is an excellent technology for outdoor environments, it does not work well indoors or in urban areas around tall buildings. This talk will describe the "whys" (applications) and "hows" (technologies) of providing accurate indoor location information to computers, devices, and sensors. We will discuss these issues in the context of the Cricket system, highlighting both Cricket's algorithms and some of its mobile and sensor computing applications.

Cricket location sensors are now commercially available; its software is obtainable under an open source license. See http://cricket.csail.mit.edu/

Bio

Hari Balakrishnan studied at IIT Madras (B. Tech., '93) and UC Berkeley (PhD, '98). He is now an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at MIT, where he leads the Networks and Mobile Systems Group at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab. His research interests are in networked computer systems, including resilient networking, wireless networks, sensor and location-aware computing, and large-scale systems. His honors include the ACM doctoral dissertation award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award, MIT's Harold Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award, two MOBICOM Best Paper Awards, and the IEEE Communication Society's William R. Bennett Prize.

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