A System Implementation of Interruption Management for Mobile Devices

As the number of worldwide cellular subscriptions approaches the world's population, the negative effects of cell phone disruption have become increasingly apparent. With advances in mobile phones, specifically their sensor technology, mobile phones are now capable of moderating interruptions based on whether or not the user would want an interruption. Research into the area of interruption management has provided models and architectures for the creation of such an application. However, to our knowledge, there are no interruption management systems currently available in the Android or iPhone app stores that utilize a probabilistic model to moderate cell phone interruptions. A probabilistic model would be an improvement over current binary decision models as the user would not need to predetermine every possible outcome. In this project, we have used a probabilistic model to implement an interruption management system for Android OS 4.0 which utilizes five contexts: schedule, time of day, location, caller relationship, and driving. Our system intercepts the call, calculates the probability of interruption, and then changes the phone's audio profile to vibrate, silent, or ring based on our model. Our performance evaluations indicate minor application foot print size, reasonable battery consumption, and very little time overhead for the application.