ABSTRACT
Microelectromechanical system (MEMS) devices truly bridge the gap between electrical and mechanical engineering, and their design involves contributions from industrial, materials, mechanical, electrical, biomedical, chemical, computer, and software engineers. Developers have unprecedented access to the underlying hardware on a mobile device. In addition to hardware such as the camera, the Android and iOS operating systems have a variety of application programming interfaces (APIs) for accessing low-level hardware features on the handsets, including
• Accelerometers • Gyroscopes • Near-field communication (NFC) • Magnetic sensors • Touch sensors • Environmental sensors • GPS, Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity), and Bluetooth sensors • Apps for accessing sensor data
This chapter explores those mobile sensors, their potential for ambient diagnostics, and applications in activity classification for elderly care at home. Finally, we walk through available apps for collecting mobile sensing data.
