New app can convert smartphone into remote-sensing device
University of Exeter researchers have created an app that can help aid humanitarian rescue work in disaster-struck regions by using geographic data to map landscapes.
Researchers
from University of Exeter have created an app which can help aid
humanitarian rescue work in disaster-struck regions by using geographic data to
map landscapes. The android app can convert smartphone into a
self-contained remote sensing device. The app, created by University of
Exeter scientists and collaborators from the Cornwall-based non-profit FoAM
Kernow, uses on-board sensors already within modern smartphones.
These include accelerometer, GPS, compass and
camera and generate ready-to-use spatial data when the device is suspended from
lightweight aerial platforms such as drones or kites. The app gathers the
data and allows the smartphone to operate autonomously so that once airborne,
it can capture images according to the user’s specification.
“There are now more mobile devices than
humans on Earth. This global distribution of devices offers a great opportunity
for democratic mapping but until now, there have been no apps that exploit the
comprehensive sensor sets in modern devices in this way,” said Dr Karen
Anderson, remote-sensing scientist at University of Exeter.
Currently the sensors on mobile phones
harvest data about their users and send this information to third-parties. ”We
wanted to start using this data for beneficial purposes such as community-led
mapping. Alongside recent developments with lightweight drones, we are excited
to see the variety of mapping applications for which our new app will be used,”
Dr Anderson noted.
The app is different from many other apps
because it can be “live-coded” which means that it is not fixed in its
functionality. This allows the user to program it to behave as desired and
images can be captured according to strict criteria for example, when the phone
arrives at a particular location, or when the camera is level and pointing in a
particular direction.
Dave Griffiths, Director at FoAM Kernow, who
programmed the app, said: “As free/open source software, the app is accessible
to anyone in the world with an android device. It means that people can
combine new sensor technology for their own uses with drones or kites in an
open-ended manner. The team found that the best results were obtained when
the phone was attached to a stable single line kite or to a gliding drone so as
to limit the vibrations.
“But there will undoubtedly be a wide range
of ways of capturing high-quality data using this app and we are really keen to
learn about the ways it is being used,” the authors added. The app can be
freely downloaded from the Google store. All of the code that supports
generation of Geo-TIFFs is freely available from GitHub.
Source
| http://www.bgr.in/news/new-app-can-convert-smartphone-into-remote-sensing-device/
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan
& Co
Best
Paper Award | Received the Best Paper Award at TIFR-BOSLA National Conference on
Future Librarianship: Innovation for Excellence (NCFL 2016) on April 23,
2016. The title of the paper is “Removing
Barriers to Literacy: Marrakesh VIP Treaty”
Note | If anybody use these post for forwarding in any social media coverage
or covering in the Newsletter please give due credit to those who are taking
efforts for the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment