Mago: Mode of Transport Inference Using the Hall-Effect Magnetic Sensor and Accelerometer
Ke-Yu Chen, Rahul C. Shah, Jonathan Huang, Lama Nachman, In Proceedings of ACM UbiComp | IMWUT 2017
Mago can track a person's mode of transport (MOT) using the Hall-effect magnetic sensor and accelerometer present in most smart devices. When a vehicle is moving, the motions of its mechanical components such as the wheels, transmission and the differential distort the earth’s magnetic field. The magnetic field is distorted corresponding to the vehicle structure , which manifests itself as a strong signal for sensing a person's transportation modality. We utilize this magnetic signal combined with the accelerometer and design a robust algorithm for the MOT detection. We evaluated Mago using over 70 hours of daily commute data from 7 participants and the leave-one-out analysis of our cross-user, cross-device model reports an average accuracy of 94.4% among seven classes (stationary, bus, bike, car, train, light rail and scooter).