Transportation
Commuter Hack of the Day: Help Out Researchers While You Wait for the Bus
Those digital screens at bus shelters can be used for crowd-sourced academic research.
Every commuter has a strategy for dealing with boredom at the bus stop, be it with a book, a smartphone, or simply savoring the last moments before the daily grind. A team of researchers out of University of Oulu in Finland has another solution: academic research.
Computer scientist Vassilis Kostakos and his team set up four interactive LCD screens across the campus of the northern Finnish university, allowing the curious passersby — drawn in by the "touch me" button — to become voluntary participants in a crowd-sourced computing project.