Smartphone Applications Testbed Using Virtual Reality

Due to the nature of smartphones' portability and mobility, many mobile apps are usually utilized in the real field environment using GPS, Wi-Fi and embedded sensors. For example, any navigation app uses GPS and Wi-Fi to locate the user in the map, and streaming apps may be used in cafeteria or even outside to satisfy the users' demand to watch soccer games anywhere and anytime. To test the usability and performance of such mobile apps in in-situ environment, we need to bring the apps to such physical world and run (a number of) test scenarios, which is often cost-inefficient depending on the size, apps and situations assumed in those scenarios. In this paper, we design and develop a testbed to test mobile apps in VR space. The system allows developers to use a real smartphone in VR and to test and evaluate their apps at the interested locations, with various network environment. The system builds and reproduces the real world environment of 3D space and real networks in the VR environment, using the existing 3D city models and our original Wi-Fi database. Then it enables to real-timely integrate the screen of the VR user's smartphone in the VR space. The user can operate the app via the VR view, and test the usability and performance of the app in such an emulated environment. The experimental result shows our architecture could achieve such cyber-physical integration with 695.5 ms delay, which is negligible in many semi-realtime services such as navigations.