An API proposal for integrating sensor data into web apps and WebRTC

Today we use smartphones and personal computers everywhere to communicate in ways made possible by the ubiquity of the Internet: we exchange emails and instant messages, make voice and video calls and participate in social media. WebRTC furthers the possibilities of audio and video communications and true peer-to-peer communications as it brings these capabilities also to an universal platform: the browser. But communication is more than just audio or video sharing, communication is about providing features capable of filling the distance void. Today we have sensors that can provide data to enrich communication by enabling the usage of information about the context of the remote peer, e.g.: providing temperature information, speed or acceleration. Mobile devices, being equipped with a range of sensors, such as accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers are prime terminals to enrich communications with context data, but all types of devices can make use of external sensing devices or even reach out to sensor networks. As the browser becomes a fundamental platform, sensor data is also relevant to non WebRTC web applications.

In this paper, we present an API proposal to enable web applications to access sensor data and an extension to WebRTC to enable peer-to-peer exchange of sensor data, bringing nearby sensor streams to web applications and multimedia communication over the web. Telemedicine, Meteorology or Seismology are prime examples of the applicability of this technology, that also enables new types of context-aware and context-based applications and communications.