Preliminary Request for Proposal

Why: Emerging mobile sensing and computing platforms will enable richer, more natural computing experiences with new capabilities that infer user behavior and context. To explore research in this area, the University of Washington and Intel Research Seattle have designed a device we call the Mobile Sensing Platform (MSP) that can be used for real-time processing of sensor traces, activity inference, speech processing, and so forth. We are now building 100 of these devices to give to our current and potential collaborators in the research community to further increase the impact of the MSP.

What: We invite proposals describing innovative research with the MSP that addresses fundamental aspects of sensor-enabled ubiquitous computing. This encompasses data processing, sensor fusion, distributed and embedded computing, networking, sensor-augmented applications and user interfaces. Sample research areas include:

· Development of new sensing hardware that integrates with the MSP

· Adaptive sampling, signal processing,  power management and embedded techniques

· Semi-supervised, unsupervised, and active learning techniques, distributed and embedded machine learning

· Data organization, anonymization, and querying probabilistic data

· Visualization, authoring, sharing in mobile non-desktop settings

· Mobile, human-centric,  multi-person applications, e.g., assisted living, child-care, emergency response, social and educational applications

· Security, privacy, and legal challenges

How: Send a 3-5 page proposal this fall (Sep 1 to Dec 31, 2007) in PDF format to msp-research-challenge@maillists.intel-research.net  It should include specific statements on the objectives of the research, potential or planned applications, and a timeline for the development, deployment, and evaluation of the work. We will make award announcements on a rolling basis beginning in January 2008. Each winning proposal will be awarded 2-10 Mobile Sensing Platforms along with chargers, cases, and software. The recipients will not be required to return the MSPs and the devices can be used for other projects after completion of the proposed research. The recipients will be asked for short progress reports twice a year.  We expect that all the artifacts produced using the MSP will be made publicly available and we will provide a web site for sharing among the community of MSP users.