Emerging Human Centric Domains of Wireless Sensor Network
Boselin Prabhu, E. Gajendran, M. Pradeep · SSRN Electronic Journal · 2016
In traditional sensor networks, the emphasis has been on unattended and autonomous system operation, with the run-time role of humans limited to being end-consumers of information products (using information products from the sensor network to make decisions and take actions). By contrast, the distinguishing aspect of human-centric sensing systems is a larger involvement of humans along other points in the data-to-decision path. This path generally consists of sensing (i.e., acquisition of sensor measurements by observing a target of interest), and information processing (e.g., extracting relevant information and metadata from sensor measurements, and fusing and analyzing such information from multiple sources to derive knowledge that forms the basis of decisions and actions). Human involvement is particularly useful in sensing various processes in complex personal, social, and urban spaces where traditional embedded sensor networks suffer from gaps in spatiotemporal coverage, limitations in making complex inferences, inability to adapt to dynamic and cluttered spaces, and aesthetic and ergonomic problems. By taking advantage of people who already live, work, and travel in these spaces, and their adaptability and intelligence, human-centric sensing makes it feasible to get information that otherwise is not possible.