Android App Cellphone Camera to Measure Air Pollution
Saturday, September 25, 2010 by big big
An Android app called Visibility, developed by researchers at University of Southern California, lets users take a photo of the sky and get data on the air quality.The free app is currently available for phones running Android 2.1 version of the operating system.
“Airborne particulate matter is a serious threat to both our health and the environment,” say the researchers on their blog. “We are working towards an optical technique to measure air visibility, and hence an estimate of some kinds of air pollution, using cameras and other sensors available on smartphones.”It’s a neat idea and it’s interesting to see how smartphones are giving rise to the trend of citizen science and crowdsourced data.
As smartphones become ubiquitous and increasingly powerful, researchers are increasingly using the devices to do complex computations and use it for crowdsourced data gathering. For instance, as part of a project called ‘Common Sense’ Intel’s research labs developed sensors that could be attached to GPS-enabled phones and measure air quality. The data gathered from these sensors would be brought back and processed to help researchers understand pollution levels. Download Visibility Application
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