Mobile Phone as Sensor

The mobile phone is the most ubiquitous mobile device and there are millions of them in use around the world. Not surprisingly engineers are researchers are trying to add all sorts of sensor to them. Mobile phones have a huge economy of scale. The cost to add a sensor to a handset is marginal compared to the entire manufacturing cost of the phone. They have built-in capability to geotag (GPS, cellid) the collected data and transmit them (to a GIS for example).

Such an experiments is ran at the Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Sensor Center. They launched an effort to develop a carbon monoxide sensor for cell phones. Eventually, a combination cell phone/CO detector could enable environmental scientists to monitor and track pollution across densely populated urban centers.

Similar project is Reality Mining that captured communication, proximity, location, and activity information from 100 subjects using Nokia Series 60 phones.

Movement and communication visualization of the Reality Mining subjects.