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

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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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..

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

Go to Chapter X to Explore Interactive Narrative on Smart Assistants

Interactive fiction, the narration paradigm that allows players or readers to directly affect the branching of a story, has been the focus both of a popular genre of books (so-called GameBooks or Choose Your Own Adventure books) and of narrative experiences delivered through interactive computer programs, which includes but is not limited to many popular videogames. This paper explores book-based interactive narrative structures and tools, presenting a novel way to explore existing works of narrative fiction through the conversational audio interface of a smart assistant. The proposed solution is implemented in the form of an Amazon Alexa skill that allows users to listen to works of interactive fiction in a similar fashion to an audiobook, while also allowing them to ‘choose their own adventure’ expressing choices and commands using their voice. Common GameBook interaction paradigms other than basic junctures within the story are also described and presented through the smart assistant program. Results from a small-scale experiment are presented and the potential of this conversational interface for interactive spoken-word literature is discussed

Gamification for crowdsourced data collection in mobile usability field studies

Larger smartphones have become increasingly commonplace, sometimes blurring the boundaries between phones and tablets. Most UI guidelines and usability studies are rarely updated and are still based on smaller screens or one-handed operations, which can be tiresome on large devices that may require different, or even two-handed postures. Past usability studies have successfully proposed crowd-sourced data collection systems, using mobile applications published on app stores. This work aims to investigate how similar systems can benefit from gamification elements in order to accelerate data collection and to produce accurate results over relatively short periods. An Android game is presented, which challenges users in short 30-second games, collecting performance of users operating the touchscreen using different device grips and postures. The preliminary analysis of the first 60.000 touch interactions is discussed and shown to be coherent with expected results

Introducing a flexible rewarding platform for mobile crowd-sensing applications

Over the course of the last years, a growing number of Mobile Crowd-Sensing (MCS) applications have been developed to exploit the broad availability of sensor-equipped mobile devices for large scale monitoring and data gathering tasks. MCS systems often pursue goals oriented towards the common good, intrinsically generating social value through the participation of volunteers to a shared cause. They benefit from the participation of large numbers of people and thus often rely on a variety of incentive mechanisms (either intrinsic or extrinsic) to motivate users. External stakeholders may also be interested in contributing to the common cause without actively taking part in the crowd-sensing process. This work introduces an inclusive rewarding platform for MCS applications that put different crowd-sensing systems, volunteers, and third-party stakeholders in communication in order to trigger network effects and positive externalities that can contribute to the common good. A simple general purpose rewarding protocol, based on the exchange of anonymous vouchers, is proposed and discussed