CS 7470 Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing (MUC)
Final Exam for Graduate Students, Fall 2011
Gregory D. Abowd
Due: Thursday, December 15, 5:40pm
This exam has two different parts. You have to complete only one of those parts. The
first part is an essay exam, in which you have to complete one of the essay
questions. The second part is an exercise to design a module of the MUC class on a
theme of your choice. More details for each part are below, including how to turn in
the exam for grading. Be sure to structure your answers in the format defined in the
questions and pay attention to the distribution of points for each part of any
question, as that will help guide how much emphasis you should place on the quality
and depth of your answer. When you have completed the exam, you must turn in a
hard-copy version to Dr. Abowd. A box will be placed outside of Dr. Abowd’s TSRB
office (329) and you may also turn in your exam there. You should also submit your
materials for the exam in t-square. For the second part of the exam, this will allow
you to turn in any materials that are better viewed online (e.g., presentations with
animations or effective use of color or videos) than in printed form.
Part 1 Essays on MUC topics
Directions: Answer any one of the following essay questions. Your answer should
be about 1000 words in length, and should contain references to the relevant
scientific literature (references do not count in the overall word count). Be sure to
answer each part of the question as directly as you can. Your answer will be graded
based on how effectively you address the question, how you demonstrate
knowledge of the readings and lectures from class, your ability to synthesize across
different readings from class, and your creativity in the answer. The quality of your
English writing will also be important. Emailed versions of your exam will not be
accepted. You may use any online source to assist you with this exam, but you are
expected to work on the exam by yourself. You are encouraged to get others to
proofread your answers to catch writing errors.
1. Ubicomp as a field of study. You read a variety of papers that set forth the
vision and breadth of challenges of ubiquitous computing, starting with Weiser’s
Scientific American article, and including a Communications of the ACM article by
Weiser, the chapter by Roy Want in the class text book, and Abowd’s article on
software engineering challenges and ubicomp. We also watched in class a video
presentation by John Seely Brown that reflected on the 20 years of progress in
Ubicomp since Weiser’s landmark article (see
http://www.slideshare.net/ubicomp2011/panel-2-9353103 ). Abowd had a
much less hopeful message to convey about ubicomp conferences that can be
viewed at http://www.slideshare.net/ubicomp2011/acm-ubicomp-2011-panel9353487).
A. (30 points) Give 2 examples of predictions from Weiser’s articles that you
can demonstrate through commercial products or research results that have
come true in the last 20 years.
B. (20 points) Give one example of a prediction from Weiser that has not come
true yet? Comment on whether you think this prediction will come true
eventually or never at all, and why you believe that to be the case.
C. (20 points) Watch Abowd’s 8-minute commentary on Ubicomp (the
conference) versus Ubiquitous Computing (the field). How would you
interpret Abowd’s comments as they pertain to the relevance of teaching a
single course on ubiquitous computing as part of a graduate degree program
in Computer Science?
D. (30 points) If you were to be in charge of the next edition of John Krumm’s
book on Ubiquitous Computing Fundamentals, what one chapter would you
remove from the book and why? What additional chapter would you add to
the book and why?
2. RFID technology. We had a guest lecture on RFID technology and you read Roy
Want’s overview article on RFID
A. (40 points) Compare and contrast the computer vision approach to object
identification versus the RFID approach. What are the advantages and
disadvantages of each? Give an example of a scenario where you would favor
one approach over the other.
B. (30 points) As a technology, how does RFID work? In your answer, define
the necessary components of an RFID system and how the different
components communicate. Explain what backscatter is and the role it plays
in this communication.
C. (30 points) In his chapter on privacy, Langheinrich spends a lot of time
discussing the issues of privacy and RFID. Summarize what the concerns
regarding privacy are that result from the use of RFID technology? Provide
an example of how privacy concerns can be addressed with RFID using a
modification of how RFID itself works. Provide an example of how privacy
concerns can be addressed through the way existing RFID is incorporated
into an existing application.
3. Sensor analysis. We had a number of lectures on sensing technologies and the
use of sensor data in this class. This essay addresses a number of topics across
those themes.
1. (30 points) What is the difference between processing/analyzing sequential
data vs. non-sequential data? Is one harder than the other? Why?
2. (30 points) What is the idea behind state models in Activity Recognition? In
theory, when should the HMM (Hidden Markov Model) technique be used to
model activities? (Hint. What is HMMs key limitation/assumption?)
3. (40 points) Imagine you would like to build a system to understand what
your dog does at home when you come to school. Taking into account what
you learnt in the class about sensors and techniques for processing sensor
data, how would you build this system? Describe a high-level architecture of
such system and compare/contrast different approaches (e.g. on-body vs.
sensors in the environment).
4. Being a reviewer for the Ubicomp community. You have now studied mobile
and ubiquitous computing enough that you could be considered a
knowledgeable person in the area. You have read a lot of papers that have been
published in the area and have engaged in a number of critical discussions on
those papers. For this question, you are to play the role of a reviewer of a paper
submitted to a conference in the area. Pick a single paper published in the
Ubicomp 2011 conference (the entire proceedings are available in the ACM
Digital Library, which is freely accessible through the Georgia Tech Library
website). This paper must not be one of the papers we already read in class.
The paper has already been published, and in this exercise you are to assume the
authors want to submit a revised version to a top journal. Structure your review
in the following way.
A. (30 points) Summarize the contributions of this paper in a paragraph.
B. (5 points) Explain why this paper may or may not be of interest to the
ubiquitous computing research community.
C. (15 points) Summarize the strengths of the paper in a paragraph.
D. (15 points) Summarize the weaknesses of the paper in a paragraph.
E. (5 points) What related work is missing from this paper?
F. (30 points) The paper needs to be extended to include at least 30% new
material to be included in the journal you are reviewing for. Give explicit
advice to the authors on how the paper should be modified and extended.
Part 2 Design a module for the MUC class
In this exercise, you are to select a major topic in mobile and ubiquitous computing
and design a 2-lecture sequence to teach that topic in a future MUC class. You are to
complete each step below. The answers to parts 1-3 should be written up as
answers to essay questions. The answers to parts 4 and 5 should be prepared as
lecture slides. If you design slides that have embedded videos or animations that
you feel are important to the presentation, then you can submit these electronically
through t-square. The instructor has both Powerpoint and Keynote to view slides. If
you want to use a different presentation format, please clear that through the
instructor and TA first.
1. (10 points) Topic selection. Looking over the syllabus to the class, decide
on a single topic to cover. You may select topics that were exactly reflected in
the syllabus (e.g., location, context-awareness, ubicomp history, RFID,
interaction on surfaces, sensor analysis, privacy, wearable computing, field
studies, systems software) or you can select topics that were not specifically
addressed in the syllabus but that you feel are interesting and important (e.g,
augmented reality, sensor design, power and heat, observational studies).
Indicate your topic and give a one-paragraph justification for the selection of
this topic.
2. (10 points) Positioning of topic in class. Indicate when in the class this
topic should be addressed and whether it should be before or after any other
related topics. For example, should a lecture on privacy come before or after
any lectures on specific sensing technologies? Or should a lecture on systems
software come before or after lectures on user experience?
3. (10 points) Select an overview article. For the first lecture on this topic,
you are to select a single reading for all students to read. This can be a
chapter from the Krumm book used in class or another foundational reading.
Provide a full reference to the reading so that the instructor can access and
view the article you have selected. You should justify why this reading is
being selected for every student to read.
4. (40 points) Design an overview lecture on the topic. Create a slide
presentation that would take approximately 50 minutes to deliver. The slide
presentation is intended to be an overview of the topic area and should
highlight the main points of the reading and provide valuable additional
material to understand the general topic area as it is relevant to the general
education of a MUC student. Aim for a presentation that is about 20 slides in
length and assume students have read the overview article. Your
presentation can include pointers to interesting videos or other
supplemental material (Web sites of interesting people in the area or
significant related topics that might be mentioned in the article) that you
could show in class. If you choose a topic that was already part of the
syllabus for class this semester, you can start with any materials that were
presented in class. For lecture topics that were not presented in class or for
which there were no prepared materials, you are free to search for other
presentation materials that you might find on the Web. For example, you
could search slideshare.net or search websites of other universities that offer
classes on this topic. While you are free to use any existing material for your
lecture, you MUST indicate where you borrowed this information from in an
acknowledgments slide at the end of your presentation.
5. (30 points) Design a discussion lecture based on related papers. For this
lecture, you are to create a list of at least 5 related papers from the published
research literature that address interesting topics linked to this module. If
you pick a topic that was covered in class, you may reuse articles that were
given as suggested readings, but at least two of your selected papers must be
papers that were not suggested for this class. You should pick articles that
have appeared in peer-reviewed conferences or journals. You should not pick
articles that just appear on the web and that you cannot prove have appeared
in a conference or journal (that kind of information can be referenced in your
introductory lecture in the previous part if you find it valuable and
trustworthy). For each article, you are to list the full reference for the article
and give a 1-2 sentence justification for why you selected it. Each article
should be presented with reference and justification on a single slide in a
presentation. The remaining presentation should list discussion topics that
you would want to have in class based on topics that cut across some subset
of papers.