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CS 528, Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing Class, Spring 2026


General Information

Class: Mondays and Thursdays, 4pm - 5.20pm, Salisbury Labs Room 305

Grader: Omkar Tikar, Email: ostikar@wpi.edu, Office Hours: Tues 4pm - 6pm, Wed 2pm - 4pm, Thurs 11am - 2pm

Note: All office hours will be held in the Zoolab in the Fuller labs sub-basement.

Instructor: Prof. Emmanuel Agu, FL-135, 508-831-5568, emmanuel@cs.wpi.edu
Office Hours: Fridays, 2 to 3pm; Others by appointment.

Course Texts:

Supplemental Texts:

Class Websites: The class website is at https://web.cs.wpi.edu/~emmanuel/courses/cs528/S26/.

Points Distribution: Presentation 10%, Design Homework 2%, Assigned Projects 34%, Final project: 30%, Quizzes: 24%

Access to course texts and papers: The course texts are available off the WPI library website (http://www.wpi.edu/+library/). A number of the assigned papers are from the ACM and IEEE digital libraries. To access these papers, just go the the WPI Library website , search for the paper title and click on the link that comes up. You may be required to log in using your WPI username and password.

Late Assignment Credit: Late programming assignments will be penalized 15 points off per day (per 24 hours). Assignments later than 4 days late will not be accepted.

Cheating (a.k.a., academic dishonesty): defined as taking credit for work you did not do or knowledge you do not possess, is strictly forbidden. First offenders will receive a zero grade for the assignment or quiz in question and an academic dishonesty report will be filed with the Office of Student Affairs. Repeat offenders will receive an NR for the course and the case will be brought before the campus hearing board (see Student Handbook). Using or submitting code retrieved from online repositories such as gitHub, or which was previously submitted by a student in a previous iteration of this class (or CS 4518 undergraduate version) is considered cheating

Course Overview

The goal of this class is to acquaint participants with some of the fundamental concepts and state-of-the-art research in the computer science areas of mobile computing and ubiquitous computing. This semester's class will including ideas on smartphone apps, mobile sensing, as well as Internet of Things and edge computing. Projects will focus mostly on mobile and ubiquitous computing ideas that are implemented on Android smartphones, but students may be allowed to explore other devices. The course will consist of assigned projects including Android app programming projects, student presentations, discussions and a final project. There will also be quizzes and the students will present papers and selected topics in groups.

Recommended Background: CS 502 or an equivalent graduate level course in Operating Systems, and CS 513 or an equivalent graduate level course in Computer Networks, and proficiency in a high programming language. This semester's class focusses on programming Android applications which is Kotlin-based.

Course Timeline: The TENTATIVE course timeline is summarized below.

Dates Quiz Days Class Topics Deadlines
Wed, Jan 14 (Mon Schedule) 1 Course Introduction, Administrivia, Definitions and Examples (Mobile, Ubiquitous Computing, IoT)
Thur, Jan 15 2 Android Overview (APIs, mobile and ubicomp modules) & Android Studio introduction Design homework assigned
Mon, Jan 19 NO CLASSES : Martin Luther King Day
Thurs, Jan 22 3 Kotlin Crash Course and Android Hello World Design homework due, Project 0 assigned
Mon, Jan 26 4 Android JetPack Compose UI Design (Part 1)
Thurs, Jan 29 Quiz 5 Android JetPack Compose UI Design (Part 2) & Mobile HCI Project 0 due
Mon, Feb 2 6 Android JetPack Compose UI Design (Part 3) Project 1 assigned
Thurs, Feb 5 7 Android JetPack Compose UI Design (Part 4) Students form groups for Projects 2, 3 & Final Project
Mon, Feb 9 Quiz 8 Android Camera (Taking pictures)
Thurs, Feb 12 9 Face analysis & MLKit overview Project 1 due, Project 2 assigned
Mon Feb 16 10 Location-aware computing, Android Location APIs & Maps
Thurs, Feb 19 11 Activity Recognition & Final Project Overview
Mon, Feb 23 Quiz 12 Sensor Programming Project 2 due, Project 3 assigned
Thurs, Feb 26 NO CLASSES : Academic Enrichment day/Advising Day
Mon, Mar 2 13 Introduction to Machine learning for ubicomp Groups submit 1 slide for proposed final Project
Thurs, Mar 5 Quiz 14 Mobile Sensing Overview Project 3 due, b) Groups select research papers to present
Mon, Mar 9 and Thurs, Mar 12 NO CLASSES: Term Break
Mon, Mar 16 15 Students propose final projects Groups submit proposal slides
Thurs, Mar 19 16 Students propose final projects Groups submit proposal slides
Mon, Mar 23 17 Introduction to Machine learning for ubicomp
Thurs, Mar 26 18 Mobile Sensing Overview
Mon, Mar 30 NO CLASSES: Wellness Day
Tue, Mar 31 (Monday Schedule) 19 IoT (architecture, frameworks, etc) + 1 student talk
Thurs, April 2 20 Edge/Fog Computing & Cyber-foraging + Voice-based Analytics
Mon, April 6 Quiz 21 Large Language Models (LLMs), ChatGPT-o + 1 student talk
Thurs, April 9 22 Wearables and Physiological Sensing + 1 student talk
Mon, April 13 23 Energy efficiency + 1 student talk
Mon, April 16 24 Mobile measurements and characterizations + 1 student talk
Mon, April 20 NO CLASSES: Patriots Day
Thurs, April 23 25 Mobile Health + 1 student talk
Mon, April 27 Quiz 26 Machine learning/on-device deep learning + Security
Thurs, Apr 30 27 Students present final projects
Mon, May 4 28 Students present final projects + Team code walkthroughs Final Projects Due

Student Presentations: In preparing your talk, please use the following powerpoint template for uniformity. Also please send me your powerpoint slides by noon on the day of your talk so that I can make the slides available on class website. A summary of presentation guidelines can be found [ HERE ] . Your presentation will be graded using this [ Paper presentation grading rubric ] . All students will also be expected to participate in class discussions.

Programming Projects: For programming projects, students will either run their work on the Android Studio emulator or use their own Android phones if they own up-to-date Android phones. Android Studio is installed in the Zoolab in Fuller basement. For students who do have access to Android phones, a few phones will be available to be loaned to students FOR THE ASSIGNED PROJECTS. It is anticipated that most of the final projects will involve building an Android application or classification of sensor data. The final projects will typically create a mobile/ubicomp solution to a societal problem.

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