The PAC lab at Cornell was formed to develop new technologies that improve the wellbeing of others. The lab’s main technological contributions include products to help improve chronic pain, eating disorders, insomnia, and emotion regulation. The research and products completed at the lab were completed with the intention to build mobile sensing systems to help combat these issues that people have everyday. Some of their bigger projects include the DobbleSleep sensing system, the MyBehavior application, and the Alertness Scanner. Because of The People Aware Computing lab at Cornell’s purpose of using technology to create a better quality of life for others, they prove to be an essential leader in ubiquitous computing.
One of the biggest projects that the PAC lab developed was the DobbleSleep sleep sensing system. This project was designed to track a person’s sleep by measuring physical and psychological variables. The variables tracked include “coarse body movements and subtle and fine-grained chest, heart movements due to breathing and heartbeat, sleep onset latency, number of awakenings, and sleep efficiency.” The purpose of this device is to inform users about their sleeping patterns and advise any changes to ensure a better sleep regime. The DobbleSleep project is a development that proves the PAC lab’s commitment to incorporating new ubiquitous computing devices to better the lives of everyone.
Another major project that the PAC lab developed was the MyBehavior application. This application was developed to allow everyone to have easy access to information about their health and diet. This app learns about a person’s lifestyle and makes medicinal recommendations including diet changes, a change in physical activity, and other ways to improve one’s health. Instead of having medical professionals evaluate the users lifestyle and recommend changes, the app plans to use the multi-arm bandit and pareto-frontier algorithms. The MyBehavior app was developed with the idea that it could be used everyday to ensure the health and happiness of everyone who uses it. Because of the lab’s allegiance to ubiquitous computing, the app is designed to be simple and a part of everyone’s daily life.
The People Aware Computing lab at Cornell is a lab dedicated to incorporating ubiquitous computing into everyone’s life. Their research and projects have done a lot to advance the amount of medical and accessible technology. The PAC lab is an essential leader in ubiquitous computing because of their many projects and contributions to the world of computing, but also because the purpose of their research is to improve the quality of life of everyone.
Work Cited
Tseng, Jean Costa and Vincent. “People-Aware Computing Lab.” People-Aware Computing Lab — Cornell University, https://pac.cs.cornell.edu/.
