Blueprints of an Automated Android Test-Bed

This paper discusses the automation of experiments on the Android platform. The most obvious choice for such a test-bed is virtualization as it provides an easy solution to several challenges, e.g., configuration, automation, clean up. However, virtualization sometimes imposes limitations, for instance, with respect to a realistic environment. Although this paper focusses mainly on our virtual test-bed for Android (named AVP for Android Virtual Playground) it also explores a solution for a physical test-bed. Both test-beds were built with the primary concern of being able to control (as much as possible) the devices participating in the experiment. Moreover, the virtual test-bed provides a wide variety of data collection possibilities while the physical one has a leaner design allowing to perform experiments in a more ad hoc way (with the devices available in a room).