This dissertation falls within the Project SUM (Sensing and Understanding Human Motion Dynamics). The main goal concerning this project is the study of people’s movement in an enclosed space, and it tries to establish mathematical models to predict the movement of people and its interaction with the elements present in physical spaces.                                                                                                                          

  Personal mobile devices have a heavily impact in the daily life of their users, and make part of their daily routines. In addition, most of these devices are equipped with several sensors and interfaces that may be used to study human mobility.

The purpose of this dissertation is to develop an application for mobile devices that allows the collection of data from several device’s interfaces (WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth and GSM cells) and send the data to a server for later processing.

To motivate the use of the application and maximize the number of users, ensuring an intensive use for a long period of time, it becomes necessary to create an appealing service integrated in that application, and also establishing a model that rewards and motivates their users. On the other hand it is necessary to take into account the privacy issues brought up by this type of strategy in collecting data, and consider its impact in the use of the application, being necessary the integration of mechanisms for ensuring the users privacy and security.

Moreover it is necessary to minimize resource consumption by the application, such as processor and memory resources, which in mobile devices are more restricted than in other devices and also to maximize the device’s autonomy, the energy resources need to be taken in account. All this can be achieved through the creation of efficient algorithms for data collection, using the device technology, such as the several available sensors, and using opportunistic communication to transmit the collected data.