Mobile Systems Researcher

I'm Robert LiKamWa, a Ph.D. student in Dr. Lin Zhong's Efficient Computing Group at Rice University.

My research focuses on increasing the battery life of smartphones and tablets while enabling them to do wildly powerful tasks. Although our devices have a diverse set of informative sensors, the challenge is to sense and process data in a power-efficient manner. Our lab uses careful observations, creating low-level system designs to work toward this goal.

[Collaborators]

[Educational History & Work Background]

[My surname: LiKamWa]

[Curriculum Vitae (PDF)]

[Resume (HTML)]

This website is now konami-code enabled!

Research Highlights

(Read more on the Research Projects pages, accessible with the left-hand navigation bar.)

(new) Draining our Glass: An Energy and Heat Characterization of Google Glass

APSys: Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems 2014, Beijing
[Paper]
[Presentation Video]
[Slides to be uploaded]

Energy Characterization and Optimization of Image Sensing Toward Continuous Mobile Vision

Best Paper Award at MobiSys 2013, Taipei (Acceptance: 15.7%, 33/210)
MobiSys: ACM Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services
[Paper PDF]
[5 Minute Video Rundown]
[Conference Slides PDF]
[Conference Talk Video]
[MIT Tech Review Coverage]
[Patent Application]

Building a Mood Sensor from Smartphone Usage Patterns

Published & Presented at MobiSys 2013, Taipei
[Paper PDF]
[Conference Slides PDF]
[Conference Talk Video]
[Jimmy Kimmel Late Night Comedy Sketch]
[ABC News Press Coverage]
[Communications of the ACM Coverage]

Reflex: Using Low-Power Processors in Smartphones Without Knowing Them

Published at ASPLOS 2012, London (Acceptance: 21.5%, 37/172)
ASPLOS: ACM Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems
[Paper pdf]
[Xiaozhu Lin's Project Site]

Other Work

(new) Styrofoam: A Tightly Packed Coding Scheme for Camera-based Visible Light Communication

Visible Light Communication Systems Workshop @ MobiCom 2014, Maui, Hawaii
[Paper]
[Authorship Note]

Styrofoam was authored by three Rice University Ph.D. students, which may seem unusual to an outside observer.

Jason Holloway, David Ramirez, and I (Robert) regularly take short coffee breaks in the afternoons to clear our minds. On one such coffee break, having read one too many inspirational stories about the early days of Xerox PARC and Bell Labs, we embarked on a project that was driven more out of pure amusement and curiosity than usual. Perhaps we wanted to prove to ourselves that we could do research without external pressure. Perhaps we wanted to author a paper together while we were in the same place. Perhaps we just wanted to go to this workshop in Hawaii. I don't really remember. But in any case, we puzzled over ideas on napkins and whiteboards, and attacked a fundamental impediment of screen-camera visible light communication links: inter-symbol interference. The result was this work, Styrofoam.

We submitted without telling our advisors; if it got rejected, we were going to keep silent. However, upon acceptance, our advisors and department were very supportive in our endeavor and funded our travel, supplemented by ACM travel grants. I presented Styrofoam at the Visible Light Communication Systems workshop, while David presented the work at the ACM Student Research Competition at the main MobiCom conference, where he earned 4th place. We had a great time chatting with researchers about Styrofoam and its positioning in the Screen-Camera Link research world.

(new) MobiSys 2014 - Best Ph.D. Forum Presentation Award

MobiSys 2014, Bretton Woods, New Hampshire

(Workshop Paper) MoodSense: Can Your Smartphone Infer Your Mood?

Best Paper Award at PhoneSense Workshop @ Sensys 2011, Seattle
PhoneSense: Workshop on Sensing Applications on Mobile Phones
[Paper PDF]

(Demo Paper) SUAVE: Sensor-based User Aware Viewing Enhancement

Demoed at UIST 2011, Santa Barbara
UIST: ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology
[Paper PDF]