Demo Abstract: TotTernary - A Wearable Platform for Social Interaction Tracking

We present TotTernary, the first infrastructure-free, long-term research platform which enables domain scientists to measure human interactions with previously unprecedented accuracy and flexibility. The platform can be tailored to varying scenarios by adjusting the ranging fidelity and the update rate and demonstrates dynamic adaptation to its environment. As a mobile, accurate, and reliable system for ranging measurements, it allows users to gather both distance and position information with decimeter accuracy. Measuring only 61 × 35 mm and weighing 7.7 g, it integrates two radios to achieve both low-power neighbour discovery and direct user interactions using Bluetooth Low Energy as well as precise ultra-wide band ranging measurements. The system introduces a novel energy-efficient ranging protocol with linear message complexity to achieve life times of up to 39 days. Furthermore, leveraging both antenna and frequency diversity, we demonstrate that the median ranging error can be reduced by up to 86% through an efficient aggregation of measurements over multiple channels. Our system is capable of highly reliable and consistent measurements with as little as 14.8 cm of ranging error in the 99th percentile and a 90% confidence interval of 11.3 cm.