FindingMiMo: Tracing a missing mobile phone using daily observations

With the widespread use of smartphones, the loss of a device is critical, both in disrupting daily communications, and in losing valuable property. When a mobile device is missing, localization techniques may assist in finding the device. Current techniques, however, hardly provide a complete solution because of inaccurate position estimation, especially in indoor environments. In this paper, we describe a software architecture called FindingMiMo, which tracks and locates a missing mobile device in indoor environments. The system consists of a missing mobile which logs diverse environmental features on a daily basis, and a chaser which traces the trail of the device using the observation log. During daily operation, the mobile device does not perform location estimation; it only observes the ambient features such as radio signals to minimize its operation cost. Instead, the chaser determines where the missing device measured the observations. This research implemented the scheme on Android-based smartphones. Real experiments with carefully designed, missing-and-tracking scenarios show that the participants successfully approached their lost phones within four meters distance, on average.