Cyclists’ Cellphone
Matéria da New Scientist Tech mostra como ciclistas e seus telefones celulares equipados com GPS (via bluetooth) estão ajudando a monitorar o ar em Cambridge, UK. Vemos mais um exemplo de um perfeito acoplamento entre mobilidade, comunicação, monitoramento e mídia locativa (celulares, bluetooth, GPS).
Abaixo trechos da matéria:
(Image: Eiman Kanjo)
“Cellphones used by bicycle couriers are monitoring air pollution in Cambridge, UK, and beaming the data back to a research lab. The technique is made possible by small wireless pollution sensors and custom software that allows the phones to report levels of air pollutants wherever they happen to be around town.
‘Mobiles are everywhere, and now have a lot of computing power,’ says Eiman Kanjo, the computer scientist at Cambridge University, UK, leading technical development of the project. ‘They can provide an alternative to expensive custom hardware and report from places that otherwise aren’t monitored.’
Kanjo and colleagues gave local cycle couriers air-pollution sensors and GPS units that connect to their cellphones via Bluetooth. Custom software lets the phone constantly report the current air quality and location to servers back in the lab.
‘They cycle around the city as usual and we receive the data over the cellphone network,’ says Kanjo. ‘We can find out what pollutants people are exposed to and where.'(…)
In future it may be possible to combine the GPS unit with the sensors, or take advantage of phones with built-in GPS. ‘Phones now are not accurate enough,’ says Kanjo, ‘I expect they will improve, so that won’t be a problem in future.’ The system was developed with help from phone manufacturer Nokia and telecoms provider O2.(…)”