The Mercury Project was created to extend the boundaries of pervasive access to information and wireless communication. The results of the project will facilitate the access to all personal data, of any type, from anywhere, any time, securely. The Mercury Project is creating both hardware --- the BackPAQ expansion pack, which is a platform for handheld research --- and software --- consisting of networking technology, middleware, and applications.

The Mercury BackPAQ is a research prototype enabling experimentation not currently possible with off-the-shelf products. The Mercury Project leverages the expandability of Compaqs popular iPAQ H3600 design by adding a custom-designed expansion pack called the BackPAQ. The BackPAQ consists of a low power CMOS VGA imager, two PC Card Slots, 32MB of flash, an accelerometer, and a cellphone headset jack and audio codec. The combination of these features enables applications such as voice or video conferencing, and roaming across multiple physical networks.

The Mercury software is based on Linux on the iPAQ. Linux was ported to the iPAQ by Compaq as part of the Open Handhelds Project(www.handhelds.org).

In the talk, I will discuss the project, its foundations in Open Handhelds, and demonstrate some of the mobility features investigated by the project. For more information on Project Mercury, go to www.crl.research.compaq.com/projects/mercury.