Download a leaflet describing the Socialnets project
SOCIALNETS: Social networking for pervasive adaptation
Harnessing adaptive human social structures for tomorrow’s
wireless networks.
Wireless and mobile devices such as phones, MP3 players, sensors and PDAs are becoming increasingly capable of creating and sharing content. Harnessing this across devices that are only intermittently connected requires new adaptive approaches to networking.
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Humans are carrying an increasing number of
small wireless devices that have the capability to generate, store,
process and forward information. As we move through our environments,
temporary opportunities arise for short range connections between these
devices, opening up the opportunity to collect and share information
relevant to diverse aspects of everyday human life.
The traditional convention of fully connected, always-on
networks is
not realistic for vast numbers of small, low powered devices.
SOCIALNETS proposes radical rethinking, with adaptive architectures to
harness the behaviour, mobility and social groups of the users.
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Social networking between devices offers a
new, yet challenging opportunity for content provision and data
forwarding in pervasive computing environments. The SOCIALNETS project
aims to enable wireless devices to socially network with each other in
order to disseminate information without the need to maintain
end-to-end connectivity.
The first step is to understand the complex structures
formed by
interpersonal relationships. This insight will motivate the study of
techniques for maintaining trust & security while encouraging
co-operation.
The dynamic nature of human social interactions will be
studied and
classified to inspire the development of a cross-layered architecture
for diverse pervasive applications that fully exploits user behaviour
to distribute data and user generated content.
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To
achieve social networking between devices, it is necessary to cross
disciplines, including anthropology, physics, bio-informatics, computer
science and engineering. This is the basis for the SOCIALNETS project
and allows us to deeply understand and exploit the traits, formation
and maintenance of physical and virtual social networks.
The SOCIALNETS project is a part of the Pervasive Adaptation Initiative (PERADA) started in the FET section of the 7th Framework Programme. The target outcome of this initiative are “Technologies and design paradigms for massive-scale pervasive information and communication systems, capable of autonomously adapting to highly dynamic and open technological and user contexts.”
