ECE 469: Wearable and Ubiquitous Computing Systems Design — Spring 2022

Class meeting time and location: TuTh 1:45–3:00 pm EST, Hudson Hall 216

Superheroes Wearables

Instructor: Dr. Rabih Younes
Duke e-mail: rabih.younes
Office hours: by appointment (link to make appointments posted on Sakai)
To provide anonymous feedback about anything related to the course, please follow the link posted on Sakai.

TAs:

Dhanasekar (Dharun) Sundararama (ds448)
Harsh Bandhey (hb170)

TA office hours: M-Th 11:00–1:30 at Hudson 101.

Course Description

In this course, students design, implement, and evaluate wearable and ubiquitous computing systems while learning about the fundamentals and pertinent research in the field. Topics covered include challenges and constraints in wearable and ubiquitous computing, input/output devices, human-computer interaction, embedded systems, prototyping, machine learning with focus on activity and affect recognition, applications with focus on healthcare, ethics, and societal impact. This course also covers project management and planning as students work on a semester-long team-based multidisciplinary project. Prerequisites: ECE 350L or ECE 550D. Instructor: Younes. One course.

Learning Objectives

Having successfully completed this course, the student should be able to:

design, develop, and evaluate wearable/ubiquitous computing systems;
describe and discuss design constraints unique to wearable and ubiquitous computing;
identify and utilize hardware and software development tools useful in wearable systems development;
work efficiently in teams on resource-constrained open-ended projects with real-world impact;
critically read, review, and present academic research papers; and
create and deliver oral and written presentations documenting a design project to both technical and non-technical audiences.

Textbook and Other Course Material

No textbook is required for this course. All material will be posted on Sakai. I will always try to have slides posted before class time so that you can take notes on them if you would like to.

Grading Policy (ECE 496)

Design project (70%): Students are required to work in teams of 3 on a semester-long project. The project should relate to wearable computing, address a real-world problem, and it should add new information to the existing literature in the field (no exact duplication of other projects). Remember, the better the contribution of the project the better would be the chances to publish it later in a paper.
Deliverables:
- Project proposal (5%) — one per team
- Weekly deliverables (20%) — one per team, including individual progress reports (one per student)
- Mid-semester presentation (10%) — one per team
- Final presentation and demo (20%) — one per team
- Project report (15%) — one per team
Paper reviews (10%): Students are required to submit reviews of assigned papers when needed throughout the semester. The review for each paper should follow the following format:
- Motivation(s): describe the main motivation(s) behind the work of the paper in 1 sentence
- Contribution(s): state the main contribution(s) of the paper in 1 sentence
- Approach: provide a high-level description of the approach in 1–3 sentences
- Strengths: provide a subjective description of the strengths of the paper in 1–3 sentences
- Weaknesses: provide a subjective description of the weaknesses of the paper in 1–3 sentences
Class discussion (10%): Students are required to share their ideas in class about the papers that they read and engage in meaningful, insightful, and fruitful conversations. No person is allowed to dominate the conversation.
Paper presentation (10%): Each student is required to present at least one research paper among the papers that are assigned throughout the semester. Each presentation should take about 15 minutes (not including questions).
Extra credit (+2): Each team member will receive two extra points on their final course grade if the team submits a one-minute video about their project's process and final deliverable (take pictures and videos along the way).
NO EXAMS/QUIZZES!
Late policy: Late submissions are not allowed unless you have a valid excuse. In that case, email the Head TA about it (and CC me) as soon as possible and wait for a decision (might involve a penalty, depending on the excuse). Refer to this list of common but unacceptable excuses borrowed from Dr. Bletsch's webpage.
Regrading policy: Regrading must be requested no later than one week after the assignment grade is released.

Important Notes

We can only grade what we receive. Always check what you are submitting and make sure you submit the right files.

We will use the Scrum agile project management framework throughout the project. You are free to select the tool that would help you with that.

We will use Google Drive to keep track of each team's progress (team meeting minutes, individual progress reports, etc.) in order to facilitate documentation and grading.

We have access to different labs for project-related work and storage (lockers).

There will be awards at the end of the semester for best project, best presenter, and best research analyst.

Misconduct

Academic misconduct will not be tolerated and will be taken very seriously.
You are expected to complete the assignments individually unless otherwise stated.
Students are encouraged to share ideas, learn from each other, and learn from online sources, but cheating is not tolerated.
Any borrowed design/code/etc. — if allowed to be borrowed — should be properly cited.
Students suspected violating the Duke Community Standard will be reported.
In addition to the measures taken by the administration, the affected assignment(s) will receive zero credit, or possibly -100% in extreme cases.
If you are considering this course of action, please see me instead and we can work something out! I want every student in my course to be successful.
Note that programming submissions will be compared to one another and to previous semesters using state-of-the-art tools to detect signs of plagiarism.

Tentative Schedule

Week	Date	Topic	Due
1	Thu 1/6	Syllabus
2	Tue 1/11	Intro to UbiComp + Prototyping	Presentation topic preferences
2	Thu 1/13	Agile Project Management with Scrum + NABC
3	Tue 1/18	The Vision of UbiComp According to Mark Weiser	Paper review
3	Thu 1/20	Discussing Teams' Project Proposals	Team project proposal
4	Tue 1/25	Introduction to Embedded Systems and Making
4	Thu 1/27	QFT & Decision Matrices + Project-Related Work
5	Tue 2/1	HCI/UCD	Paper review
5	Thu 2/3	Project-Related Work	Project weekly deliverables
6	Tue 2/8	Challenges and Constraints in Wearables Design	Paper review
6	Thu 2/10	Project-Related Work	Project weekly deliverables
7	Tue 2/15	Wearable Input/Output Technologies + Team Peer Feedback 1	Paper review
7	Thu 2/17	Project-Related Work	Project weekly deliverables
8	Tue 2/22	UbiComp Sensing	Paper review
8	Thu 2/24	Project-Related Work	Project weekly deliverables
9	Tue 3/1	Mid-Semester Project Presentations	Mid-semester project presentation
9	Thu 3/3	Project-Related Work	Project weekly deliverables
10	Tue 3/8	NO CLASS (Spring Recess)
10	Thu 3/10	NO CLASS (Spring Recess)
11	Tue 3/15	Context Awareness + Team Peer Feedback 2	Paper review
11	Thu 3/17	Project-Related Work	Project weekly deliverables
12	Tue 3/22	Introduction to Machine Learning (guest lecture by our TAs)
12	Thu 3/24	Project-Related Work	Project weekly deliverables
13	Tue 3/29	UbiComp & Healthcare	Paper review
13	Thu 3/31	Project-Related Work	Project weekly deliverables
14	Tue 4/5	Guest Lecture by Chris Koszarsky — Director of Engineering, Garmin International
14	Thu 4/7	Project-Related Work	Project weekly deliverables
15	Tue 4/12	UbiComp & Society
15	Thu 4/14	Project-Related Work	Project weekly deliverables
16	Tue 4/19	Project Final Presentations & Demos	Final project presentation
17	Tue 4/26	NO CLASS	Project Report

This semester's award winners:

Best project: Garmin Glucometer (Onome Akinbode-James, Yi Chen, Cameron Jarnot, and Josh Medway)
Best presenter: Alex Xu
Best research analyst: Doherty Guirand