Smartphones can set your thermostat, control your lights, and even monitor your heart rate.
Smartphones can set your thermostat, control your lights, and even monitor your heart rate. But thanks to MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub research assistant Jake Roxon, they will also soon be able to measure pavement quality and reduce vehicle emissions.
In collaboration with Harvard University student Shahd Nara, Roxon has applied his love of cars with his engineering expertise to create Carbin, a crowdsourcing app that measures road quality and eventually will guide drivers on the most fuel-efficient route. The app utilizes research conducted by the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub to cut a vehicle’s emissions by an estimated 5 to 10 percent.
The key to Carbin is a phone’s accelerometer. Ubiquitous in smartphones, the accelerometer measures orientation and local acceleration, allowing the device to accomplish tasks like changing the position of a screen or measuring footsteps. But most phones don’t fully utilize their accelerometers; smartphone accelerometers generally take measurements far below their practical potential of 100 hertz, a frequency of 100 times per second. By tapping into this reserve, Roxon can increase the sensitivity of a smartphone to detect the slightest defects in pavements, all from within a moving car’s cabin.
Read more at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Image via Pixabay
