Mobile plus: multi-device mobile SW platform for transparent cross-device functionality
sharing

A novel mobile platform, called Mobile Plus, is developed that allows multiple smart devices to easily share their various functionalities without modifying applications. It provides a virtualized environment as if applications of different devices are executed on the same device, which enables unmodified apps to share a wide range of functionalities across devices. With a prototype of Mobile Plus, more than 20 use cases are demonstrated with most popular legacy applications available in the Google app market.

Article  |  Fall 2018

Professor Insik Shin and his research team from the Cyber Physical System (CPS) Lab in the School of Computing introduced Mobile Plus, a novel mobile platform that allows multiple smart devices to easily share their various functionalities without modifying applications (apps). Recently, the popularization of smart devices has caused users to own a large number of devices, and the types of functionalities provided by these devices has gradually diversified, such as camera, shopping, and healthcare.

In such trend, it is possible to create a variety of user experiences (UXs) if several devices share their functionalities with one other. For example, there are serious security issues with using payment services on a public device (e.g., smart TV) to purchase goods via a shopping app. However, we can safely shop on the public device if the payment is processed on a user’s personal device (e.g., smartphone). In a similar way, we can also enjoy sensor-based games on a smart TV by borrowing sensors from a smartphone.

Existing solutions to enable these exciting opportunities fall into two categories: an app-level approach that employs app cooperation and a system-level approach that designs a cross-device platform. However, the former has a burden to develop specific apps for functionality sharing, and cannot support unmodified legacy apps. On the other hand, the latter enables unmodified apps to use functionalities of other devices, but cannot support functionality sharing, regardless of functionality types.

Prof. Shin’s team presented Mobile Plus, a new mobile platform that provides a virtualized environment as if apps of different devices are executed on the same device, which enables unmodified apps to share a wide range of functionalities across devices. To this end, Mobile Plus extends the existing remote procedure call (RPC) mechanism to multi-device environments. The RPC mechanism is an inter-process communication technique that allows an app to invoke a method of another app as if it is a local method, and most mobile platforms utilize the mechanism so that apps can share not only system functionalities but also app functionalities within a single device. By extending the RPC mechanism, the research team has made it possible for unmodified apps to share functionalities from another device as if the same device provides them, regardless of functionality types.

The team developed Mobile Plus using two smart devices, a Nexus 6 smartphone and a Nexus 10 tablet, and demonstrated more than 20 use cases for multi-device usage by employing legacy apps commercialized in the Google app market. In particular, they showed it is possible to share app functionalities such as Facebook login, Google play payment, and Adobe PDF viewer as well as system functionalities like camera, sensor, and clipboard.

Mobile Plus is expected to open new possibilities for the smart device market because it can accelerate the development of creative and useful applications to provide exciting UXs. In recognition of this contribution, Prof. Shin’s team published and presented this work at MobiSys’17, a top-tier mobile computing conference, in June 2017.