Introduction
"Share My World" – A General Purpose Media Capture and Communication Environment for
Mobile Devices with Intermittent Network Connectivity
Julian Bleecker (PI), François Bar, and Julian Bleecker, Shahram
Ghandeharizadeh (co-PIs)
University of Southern California
An emerging area of research is explores the creation, exchange, and dissemination of
multimedia content using mobile devices. An intellectual challenge is to develop frameworks
that deliver the right data to the right consumer device at the right time. This is challenging
for several reasons. First, a device might be network connected intermittently (not connected
at all times). Second, audio and video clips are typically large in size and require sustained
bandwidths for their continuous display. Effective frameworks addressing these challenges
will support diverse classes of applications such as in-vehicle entertainment systems, urban
initiatives that extend one's office to a portable device for use during commute home, and
applications to better serve social and economic challenges of underserved communities. We
propose to target the last application class for an interdisciplinary study of mobile media. In
the following, we start with a description of several applications pertaining to mobile media.
Subsequently, we describe the applied and fundamental hypotheses shaping our activities.
Section 3 contains our expected results. We conclude with a timeline for our project.
Mobile media and underserved communities
We focus on the use of multimedia to better serve social and economic challenges of
underserved communities, both urban and rural. We seek to develop intuitive media capture
and networking tools to empower individuals with no computer skills to capture images,
sounds, video or simple text depicting aspects of their lives and environment, edit them into
multimedia objects (web pages, short movies, blog entries, etc.) and share them with others
using an intermittent network. Below, we outline two candidate applications. The first that
can be studied in collaboration with some of the partner schools of USC's "Good Neighbor
Program" in South Central Los Angeles. The second would explore a similar framework within
a remote, developing country environment (we are seeking additional funding from Microsoft’s
“Digital Inclusion” program to support this deployment in Paraguay, in collaboration with the
Institute for Connectivity in the Americas.):
1- Micro-local news empowers young neighborhood residents to document their world,
creating microlocal content that is directly relevant to their daily practice and to their
community’s life, from neighborhood events to the stories behind graffiti art on street walls. It
draws upon inexpensive digital cameras and portable video and audio production equipment
to re-invigorate the concept of community access cable TV or micropower FM, to create
community-derived content. Beyond the prototyping phase, we envision micro-local news as
a key application in developing country settings, where it will make it possible for local
populations to report on their lives, for audiences as varied as neighboring communities, their
friends and family members who have emigrated to the US, or to advertise the attraction of
their locale to eco-tourists.
2- Peer-to-peer microlending enables local inhabitants to describe and chronicle small
business projects they wish to undertake (ranging for example from sustainable farming to
eco-tourism or indigenous crafts production.) The network infrastructure in turn would let
them publicize their project on the internet and invite micro-loans from individuals in
developed countries. This implementation would complement existing web platform such as
that developed by non-profit kiva.org (http://kiva.org/), whose key bottleneck at this point is
the documentation of micro-enterprise opportunities in developing countries.
Research methods
Our research methods can be categorized into applied and fundamental. We describe each
in turn. The applied research includes a software prototype of SMW using off-the-shelf
hardware. Each stand-alone component, called WiFi Bedouin, is equipped with audio and
video recording devices to capture its environment. WiFi Bedouin is a project developed by
Bleecker as a technology framework for creating a rugged, mobile, portable networked
computer. The WiFi Bedouin was developed as part of a fellowship for USC's Institute for
Multimedia Literacy during the summer of 2004. These mobile devices include one or more
wireless communication components in order to communicate and collaborate with one
another and base station(s). Challenges include intuitive user interfaces, and modular
software toolkit that can be tailored to realize different applications. Systems resulting from
this investigation can be used to address the needs of other underserved communities.
Fundamental research includes design and implementation of intelligent techniques for
effective management and delivery of data using mobile devices with intermittent network
connectivity. The problems to be addressed include: Given a finite amount of storage
capacity for a WiFi Bedouin, how should a WiFi Bedouin choose victim objects when its
storage is exhausted and additional clips are being recorded? With limited radio range of
WiFi devices, how can multiple WiFi Bedouins collaborate to maximize the benefits of data
delivered to the base stations? With the later, a WiFi Bedouin may carry data on behalf of
another Wifi Bedouin. These research topics are important because audio and video clips
are typically large in size and may exhaust available resources. If successful, obtained
research results might apply to other applications of mesh networks of mobile PDAs.
Expected Results
The tangible assets produced as a result of this effort is are as follows. First, applications
developed and deployed in South Central LA urban setting. Second, SMW as general
purpose software. Third, Bedouins as mobile collaborative devices to facilitate recording and
delivery of rich media. Fourth, intelligent techniques to manage and deliver data in an
intermittent network of mobile devices. In addition to technical publications in professional
forums, we disseminate our results by collaborating with organizations such as "Good
Neighbor" program of USC, and Institute for Connectivity in the Americas (see letter of
support). Below, we elaborate on the expected outcome of our applied and fundamental
research activities.
WiFi Bedouin is a platform for capturing one's world and digitally disseminating those
experiences using a very simplified interface. Using a robust, mobile framework for recording
digital audio, video and still imagery, WiFi Bedouin cobbles together individual components of
the recordings, using templates, into an annotated presentation in a way that is simple
enough for those who have had no exposure to digital technologies. These presentations
are put together using standard web technologies (XHTML, CSS, etc.) making them suitable
for dissemination and display through a wide variety of usage scenarios. The components of
WiFi Bedouin include a small scale mobile processing unit, integral digital camera for still and
moving image capture, audio recorder suitable for voice and song, and an integral 802.11
WiFi node to allow for the creation of short-range networking. The present prototype uses a
small, single-board computer, portable, battery-powered WiFi access point, and CF storage
for digital media. There is one overarching technology design goal. This goal is to provide a
way to broaden the accessibility to content creation techniques that facilitate the circulation of
culture, ideas and individual experiences, allowing those for whom the value of capturing and
sharing experiences is well-appreciated, but who have never heard of bogging or even the
Internet. A first step toward achieving this goal is to create a system that integrates a variety
of rich-media types (video, audio, still imagery), making it a “first class” content creation
platform on par with networked PCs and sophisticated laptops, but do so without
compromising extreme ease of use. This will be a single purpose device, using culturally
literate iconography to reveal its usage scenarios.
We envision a collaborative group of WiFi Bedouins to facilitate reliable delivery of data in the
intermittent network that connects a data producer to its target recipient. In our application,
there are several forms of such data exchanges: from a WiFi Bedouin to a server for
publication of its data on the web, and from a server to a WiFi Bedouin for delivery to a client
machine. A fundamental research question is placement of data across the WiFi Bedouins to
minimize the delay observed from when a clip is available to its delivery time on a target
machine. To simplify the discussion, we conceptualize the environment to consist of a
collection of stationary servers and clients, and mobile WiFi Bedouins traveling along different
paths between one (server, client) pair. We assume each WiFi Bedouin knows its travel path,
geographical location, and is able detect other WiFi Bedouins in its radio-range to power up
and exchange messages with them. Two WiFi Bedouins may exchange meta-data
information such as their travel paths, and which other WiFi Bedouins, client and server
nodes they have encountered in the past. Using this meta-data information, a WiFi Bedouin,
say B1, may detect that a passing WiFi Bedouin, say B2, will encounter its target client. In
this case, B1 may request B2 to carry either an entire replica or a fraction of its data for the
target client. The feasibility of this depends on the size of the data, the amount of bandwidth
available between B1 and B2, and the duration of the time B1 and B2 are in each others'
radio range. Another factor is B2's free storage. If B2's free storage is exhausted then it must
evict another data item in order to accommodate B1's request. How should B2 decide to
maintain in its storage in order meet different performance metrics? These metrics might
include minimizing the overall average delay encountered from when a data item is published
on a WiFi Bedouin to its delivery to a client. Another possible metric is to associate a value
with each data item and control data placement with the objective to maximize the total value
of data delivered. Design and implementation of algorithms to address these fundamental
research topics are tangible assets of our activities.
Other tangible assets of this undertaking include written proposals to both governmental and
non-governmental agencies in support of our interdisciplinary research activities. NSF and
Microsoft research are two candidate organizations that we are considering at the time of this
writing.
Timeline
In order to separate the technical issues and to allow for progressive training of the user
populations, we structure the introduction of the WiFi Bedouin platform in three successive
stages:
Stage 1 – autonomous WiFi Bedouin. Our first step will be the development of a single,
autonomous WiFi Bedouin, communicating with one or two media capture satellites (camera,
voice recorder, etc.) This will allow us to focus on two key research issues: (1) the user
interface and (2) recording and management of continuous media.
Stage 2 – docking WiFi Bedouin. In this second stage, we allow the WiFi Bedouin to
periodically “dock” to the internet, where it will synch its content with objects on server. This
will allow us to test the application environment that allows multimedia interactive web use
with limited, intermittent connectivity, and to sketch out the basic data transfer architecture.
During this period, we collect profile information from the autonomous WiFi Bedouins used to
implement an application. These profiles will be used to fine-tune and evaluate our existing
techniques [1] on how to effectively manage mobile data intelligently.
Stage 3 – collaborative WiFi Bedouins. In a later stage (which may extend beyond the first
year of this project) we plan to deploy several WiFi Bedouins that can form ad-hoc networks
when they come within proximity of each other, as well as other network docking points. This
will allow us to develop and test a full-fledged version of the data management techniques.
During the first half of the year, we will build a prototype and test it in South Central Los
Angeles, within the disadvantaged neighborhood surrounding USC. The setting’s proximity
will be crucial for us to fine-tune the prototype and ascertain its field-worthiness. In the
following six months, we document our research results and write proposals to secure
continued funding for our research activities.
Time permitting; we will explore other
applications of our framework in both South Central and other rural areas. An example rural
setting is application of our framework to select communities on the fringes of the
Paraguayan Wildlands, where on-going environmental preservation efforts often clash with
the cultural, social and economic lives of indigenous populations. It is hoped that information
infrastructure will support local populations’ ability to derive economic benefits from their
proximity to the protected areas, for example through eco-tourism or sustainable agriculture.
Thus, our project will help amplify the potential of the intermittent connection within the
Paraguayan Wildlands environment.