With Cellphones, Saving the Planet One Step at a Time
Read the full story in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
What is it with the way that real-time measurement affects our personal choices — particularly with regard to environmental issues? Students who have energy-usage monitors in their residence halls, for example, end up expending less energy than their counterparts without such visual aids. (A particularly colorful monitor featured a drowning polar bear.)
cell phoneNow researchers at the University of Washington have come up with another monitor that they hope will play a part in saving the planet. It’s a monitor for cellphones, and it can determine whether its user is walking or running, or riding in a car, train, or bus. The program uses cellphone-tower signals to tell if the phone’s owner is riding in a vehicle, and it then presents the person with choices for modes of transit (suggesting cars or trains, for example) after the ride is over. The researchers hope the program will eventually be able to sense movement to determine the mode of transit automatically.