A Little Diversion For Your Wednesday
Now, I've never heard of the VisLab Intercontinental Autonomous Challenge (VIAC), but apparently it's a 13,000km trek from Parma, Italy to Shanghai, China using unmanned, solar energy powered vehicles focused on highlighting the benefits of green transport. As part of the trip, the VIAC vehicles will be equipped with specially-designed smartphones that monitor CO2 levels, providing a live stream of data to the Web via Twitter, @greenhaviour. It's IBM Human Centric solutions behind the data collection on CO2 pollutants. "Visualising the data will enable us to identify quickly how pollution levels vary across continents. We will use IBM analytical tools to discover trends such as a correlation between certain illnesses and the quality of the air," said Ed Jellard, consultant from IBM Hursley Development Lab. It's all about connecting devices to the Internet and then collecting data pretty much anywhere and anytime. Anywhere means anywhere--from cars to appliances, power grids, waterways and even clothing The data effort with the vehicle trek illustrates the value of a network of sensors embedded in devices, such as smartphones, says Nicola Palmarini, IBM Human Centric Solutions Centre. The technology is based on IBM Message Broker, WebSphere Application Server software and Tivoli Storage Manager and runs on the Android 2.1 mobile platform. |
