| KEYWORD |
A smartphone app to study human behavior
keywords ANDROID, BLUETOOTH, COMPLEX NETWORKS, COMPLEX SYSTEMS, EPIDEMIC SPREADING, INTERNET OF THINGS, NETWORKS THEORY, SENSORS
Reference persons ALESSANDRO RIZZO
External reference persons Francesco V. Surano, PhD candidate, francesco dot surano at polito dot it
Thesis type EXPERIMENTAL / DEVELOPMENT
Description The proposed thesis aims at carrying our preliminary studies on the potentiality of Bluetooth technology to investigate on the dynamics of short-range human interaction. Such an interaction is of particular interest, as it drives many social
phenomena, such as epidemic spreading, gossiping, diffusion of information and innovation, community creation, collective mobility patterns.
Bluetooth has become a useful technology to explore human interactions, mainly due to the diffusion of smartphones in the population and the development of novel protocols that allow for less power consumption.
A series of studies have been conducted in this direction using Bluetooth technology measurements: starting from [1], in which we can find a vast description of a complex experiment involving approximately 1000 participant, since Bluetooth can be considered a good estimator of distances among devices [2], [3], many different consideration on human behaviours can be drawn [4], [5], [6].
Objectives
The student will be involved in the study, design, development, and testing of a smartphone app to study short-range human interaction. Several theses will be opened, according to the project needs and the candidate skills and expectations.
Design and implementation will be carried out with state-of the art development kits.
The problem regarding the quality of Bluetooth intensity signal will be addressed with model-based calibration, studying the most common Bluetooth chipsets on the market, or through experimentation and data-analysis.
The use or exploitation of beacons - static sensors in specific places - will be used to infer mobility patterns inside buildings.
Data from contact and mobility patterns will be interlaced to obtain a richer set of information on the behaviour of the population.
Gamification will be used to engage users in the learning and characterization of pervasive social phenomena, such as epidemics or diffusion of information, and on the design of strategies that may block or facilitate such diffusions. This will constitute a prototype for a new research activity on citizen science at PoliTO.
This work will contribute to define guidelines to policy makers and citizens for the definition of services or policies based on the presence and displacements of people over time.
From this work useful suggestion for institution could emerge in order to provide better services based on the presences and displacement of peoples during the day.
References
[1] S. A., S. V., S. P., C. A., M. M.M., and L. J.E., \Measuring large-scale social networks with high resolution," PLoS ONE, vol. 9, no. 4, p. no pagination, 2014.
[2] A. K. Hossain and W. S. Soh, \A comprehensive study of Bluetooth signal parameters for localization," IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications, PIMRC, 2007.
[3] S. Chai, R. An, and Z. Du, \An Indoor Positioning Algorithm Using Bluetooth Low Energy RSSI," Amsee, no. Amsee, pp. 276-278, 2016.
[4] V. Sekara and S. Lehmann, \The strength of friendship ties in proximity sensor data," PLoS ONE, vol. 9, no. 7, pp. 1-8, 2014.
[5] V. Sekara, A. Stopczynski, and S. Lehmann, \Fundamental structures of dynamic social networks," vol. 113, no. 36, 2015.
[6] A. Stopczynski, A. S. Pentland, and S. Lehmann, \Physical Proximity and Spreading in Dynamic Social Networks," 2015.
Deadline 09/09/2019
PROPONI LA TUA CANDIDATURA