Large-scale assessment of mobile crowdsensed data: a case study

Mobile crowdsensing (MCS) is a well-established paradigm that leverages mobile devices’ ubiquitous nature and processing capabilities for large-scale data collection to monitor phenomena of common interest. Crowd-powered data collection is significantly faster and more cost-effective than traditional methods. However, it poses challenges in assessing the accuracy and extracting information from large volumes of user-generated data. SmartRoadSense (SRS) is an MCS technology that utilises sensors embedded in mobile phones to monitor the quality of road surfaces by computing a crowdsensed road roughness index (referred to as PPE). The present work performs statistical modelling of PPE to analyse its distribution across the road network and elucidate how it can be efficiently analysed and interpreted. Joint statistical analysis of open datasets is then carried out to investigate the effect of both internal and external road features on PPE . Several road properties affecting PPE as predicted are identified, providing evidence that SRS can be effectively applied to assess road quality conditions. Finally, the effect of road category and the speed limit on the mean and standard deviation of PPE is evaluated, incorporating previous results on the relationship between vehicle speed and PPE . These results enable more effective and confident use of the SRS platform and its data to help inform road construction and renovation decisions, especially where a lack of resources limits the use of conventional approaches. The work also exemplifies how crowdsensing technologies can benefit from open data integration and highlights the importance of making coherent, comprehensive, and well-structured open datasets available to the public

Massive Remote School Trips: A Case Study

none5noDuring the height of the CoViD-19 pandemic in 2020 and early 2021, schools throughout Europe have been closed for several months, leaving teachers with the responsibility of providing distance learning through video conferencing and remote-presence systems, while parents were scrambling for appropriate tools and support. School outings have also suffered from the limited mobility of students given by stay-at-home orders and other restrictions. In this paper we present a set of technologies developed to reproduce the school trip experience, allowing students to stay at home or in school and requiring only a Web browser and Internet access, while integrating communication tools that allow participants to actively be engaged in interactive lessons and educational experiences. In 2020 the tool has been used during the “CodyTrip” event, a two-day visit to the town of Urbino, attended by more than 15.000 students, followed up with a series of events in 2021 with over 115.000 participants. Results from the pilot events show very high engagement and demonstrate the feasibility of organizing online visiting experiences with massive participation without compromising the perceived interactivity of the proposed activities, which can be equally engaging for different audience demographics. Findings also suggest that this solution may be adopted not only as a contingent substitute for traveling during the pandemic, but as an effective tool to widen the scope and appeal of cultural tourism.openBogliolo, Alessandro; Delpriori, Saverio; Di Francesco, Gian Marco; Klopfenstein, Cuno Lorenz; Paolini, Brendan DominicBogliolo, Alessandro; Delpriori, Saverio; Di Francesco, Gian Marco; Klopfenstein, Cuno Lorenz; Paolini, Brendan Domini

Balance trucks:Using crowd-sourced data to procedurally-generate gameplay within mobile games

Within the field of procedural content generation (PCG) research, the use of crowd-sensing data has, until now, primarily been used as a means of collecting information and generating feedback relating to player experience within games, and game aesthetics. However, crowd-sensing data can offer much more, supplying a seemingly untapped font of information which may be used within the creation of unique PCG game spaces or content, whilst providing a visible outlet for the dissemination of crowd-sensed material to users. This paper examines one such use of crowd-sensed data, the creation of a game which will reside within the CROWD4ROADS (C4RS) application, SmartRoadSense (SRS). The authors will open with a brief discussion of PCG. Following this, an explanation of the features and aims of the SRS application will be provided. Finally, the paper will introduce ‘Balance Trucks’, the SRS game, discussing the concepts behind using crowd-sensed data within its design, its development and use of PCG

Mobile crowdsensing for road sustainability: exploitability of publicly-sourced data

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the opportunities and the economic benefits of exploiting publicly-sourced datasets of road surface quality. Crowdsourcing and crowdsensing initiatives channel the parti..

Extensible Immersive Virtual Environments for Large Tiled Video Walls

The intent of the work is to present an Immersive Virtual Environment (IVE) as a new abstracted management layer on top of the Scalable Adaptive Graphics Environment (SAGE) system, allowing the simplified management and linear scaling of multiple SAGE-driven video walls, and the creation and control of simple interactive scenarios. The framework exposes evolved Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that are detached from the underlying system and can be used by mobile clients as well. Primitives offered to developers and content creators allow the definition of immersive cinematographic experiences using basic commands, which are synchronized on the whole IVE environment. A complete implementation of the system is described and then evaluated with the specific case of one physical installation

Standing Balance Assessment by Measurement of Body Center of Gravity Using Smartphones

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Incentives for Crowdsourcing

This whitepaper provides an overview perspective on the foundation of crowdsourcing and crowdsensing, detailing related notions such as collective intelligence and citizen science. As all crowd-based initiatives are usually built upon a core of volunteers participating to an “open call” to perform tasks, crowdsensing in particular relies on the willingness of participants to invest time and interest in a cause, sacrifice limited resources of their mobile devices, and provide implicit or explicit efforts, including ignoring risks that impact the privacy of their data. This document describes how incentives and rewarding schemes are adopted in this context to attract a community of users and to keep it engaged. Two incentive schemes in particular are described, both of which have been developed within the CROWD4ROADS project: a game mode that transforms collected data into generated terrain for a 2D platform game and a voucher exchange system that acts as a platform for any initiative for the common good. Both incentive schemes are fully anonymous and integrate within a fully anonymous data collection scheme

Crowdsensing Scenarios for the Common Good

This whitepaper provides an overview of mobile crowdsensing, as an extension to “participatory sensing” that tasks average citizens and volunteers to perform local knowledge gathering and sharing, in particular thanks to the use of mobile smart devices. The article describes existing examples from literature and related works, detailing how crowdsensing has already been adopted successfully in several different fields, which share the focus on the common good. Examples include existing systems aimed at the development of smart cities, life quality improvements for urban citizens, critical event management, social recommender systems, or road quality monitoring platforms, such as SmartRoadSense

The Quiz-Master Bot: a Persistent Augmented Quiz Delivered Through Online Messaging

Chatterbots, or bots, have recently enjoyed a dramatic comeback: these automated agents, communicating with users through the exchange of simple text messages, have overtaken most online messaging platforms and are increasingly used to provide means to access information or to make use of services. Because of the pervasive popularity of messaging platforms, as they represent the main driver in smartphone usage across all demographics, bots represent an attractive development platform with direct access to a large number of users and a very low access barrier. Many bot platforms allow the creation of special hyperlinks that invoke a particular dialogue with the bot. These hyperlinks can be presented to users digitally as URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers) or visually as QR Codes that can be embedded in digital media or bound to a physical object or a geographical location. In both cases, hyperlinks may carry additional information, providing valuable context, while enabling a seamless transition to the conversation with the bot. In this work we describe a system that makes use of an automated data collection bot that delivers quiz questions to users. Hyperlinks are used to determine the question asked, for instance ensuring their sequence or tying them to a specific document. The system can work both synchronously during live events and asynchronously through persistent links. We also present two large-scale events during which this system has been used to coördinate online educational coding quizzes and describe the implemented system in detail, illustrating its effectiveness and its gaming mechanics, and also discussing strengths and weaknesses of the proposed system. We argue that the bot-aided coding quiz and its game mechanics could be applied profitably to many other educational events or data collection tasks