Work in progress - integrating undergraduate research and education with the TeamTrak mobile computing system

Abstract

To better prepare undergraduate students for graduate school and careers as computer scientists, we have undertaken an effort to increase both expertise and interest in research through a novel course format. The course weaves an active research project in mobile computing with a senior class on distributed systems. To facilitate the instruction, we use a mobile computing platform, TeamTrak, which consists of tablet computers that collect and display information from sensors such as GPS receivers and share data via an ad-hoc network. Students participate in outdoor field tests as a group and individually design and execute their own measurement experiments and engineering projects.We have begun an effort to increase the level of interest in research and an understanding of and appreciation for the scientific method by integrating a research project in mobile computing with a senior-level class in distributed systems. By participating in an ongoing research effort, students not only gain experience formulating hypotheses and designing and executing experiments, but in the classroom setting we can take advantage of any teachable moments that arise and explain why students observed the results they obtained.The TeamTrak mobile computing platform [4], shown in Figure 1, is an array of tablet computers augmented with sensors mounted on a helmet. Each node collects sensor data, shares it via an ad-hoc wireless network, and displays the state of the entire network back to the user. Students deploy the system by spreading out across campus, each student carrying one node and its sensors. Each device keeps a second-bysecond log of its location, sensor state, and peer data, as well as any specific data of interest for a particular exercise, so that sessions can be archived, re-constructed, and evaluated at a later date, as shown in Figure 2.We have scheduled a series of outdoor lab exercises using TeamTrak over the course of a semester. Each lab consists of a briefing on the overall problem of interest, the hypothesis to be tested, the procedures to be followed, and the data to be collected. A sample exercise is to arrange the nodes in various configurations, then observe how the routing protocol stabilizes over time. Students initially carry out predesigned exercises but proceed to later design and execute their own.With this format, we intend to produce these outcomes:• Improved understanding of distributed algorithms such as routing protocols by access to a tangible example. • Improved understanding of the scientific method through experiments where the "correct" results are unknown. • Experience in proposing, conducting, and evaluating experiments and engineering projects in small groups. • Benefit to the research project by exposing the system to real users and unexpected situations. A pilot of this course format is taking place in spring 2007. Students complete a series of instructor-led exercises. They also independently design and execute two projects using the TeamTrak equipment: one a quantitative measurement of ...

Lessons Learned Building TeamTrak: An Urban/Outdoor Mobile Testbed

“…We conducted a series of field tests with an undergraduate distributed systems class, described in [6]. Note that our goal in these tests is not a systematic study of any one component, but rather to gain experience with the system, uncover practical implementation issues, and suggest problems for further study.…”