On the comparison of location based software solutions used for tracking purposes in ambient assisted living applications

Wearable and handheld devices, such smart phones, have come a long way in a very short time as they are capable of providing an extremely vast number of services simply at the click of a button, or even automatically. The diversity of the different embedded sensors (accelerometer, light sensors, etc.) lay the required foundation for the emergence of specialized applications that are capable of serving all kinds of purposes. By taking advantage of this specialized hardware found in smart phones, not only it has become feasible to constantly sense and gather information from the device's environment, but it has also become an effortless task to transmit the collected data to any individual or organization in a plethora of forms. This paper serves as an evaluation method for a location based Android application, SeniorTracker, by presenting a comparison between two applications that are both used for tracking down a device. While both have quite a similar purpose, the way they go about it as well as the ways the application itself can be utilized, drastically differs. SeniorTracker's main purpose lies in the retrieval of the coordinates of a device in case it is located somewhere it is not expected to be, allowing monitoring of persons that potentially will be lost, otherwise. The comparison was mainly focused on the performance of both applications when it comes to location retrieval and energy consumption while keeping in mind the respective tasks that each of them were designed to fulfill.