Communications of the ACM
A New Mobile Phone App For Grassroots Mapping
A mobile phone app developed at the University of Exeter allows a standard smartphone to be converted into a self-contained remote sensing device.
Credit: letsgodigital.org
University of Exeter researchers have developed a mobile phone application that uses geographic data to map landscapes and help humanitarian rescue workers in disaster-struck regions.
The app enables a standard smartphone to be converted into a self-contained remote sensing device. It uses conventional sensors already in existing smartphones to 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 enables the smartphone to operate autonomously, so once airborne it can capture images. In addition, the app can be "live-coded," which means it is not fixed in its functionality, so the user can program it to behave as desired and capture images according to specific criteria.
"We 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," says FoAM Kernow director Dave Griffiths, who collaborated on the research.
From University of Exeter
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