News

Thanks to the participation of Coventry University in the CROWD4ROADS project and the Disruptive Media Learning Lab’s (DMLL) expertise in adaptive learning techniques with an emphasis on gamification and learning through play, we are working to introduce new game elements within the SmartRoadSense app.

Read all about the this initiative, its objectives, the proposed design, and the gameplay of the upcoming “Balance Trucks” game in the Whitepaper by Mark Lewis.

This morning prof. Alessandro Bogliolo held a public presentation of the CROWD4ROADS project, in the Aula Magna hall of the University “Dunărea de Jos” in Galaţi (Romania) during an event organized by Fundația SATEAN, announcing that SmartRoadSense is now available in Romania. Romanian roads, just like roads in the UK, Greece, and Italy, can now be monitored by volunteers using the mobile app.

Prof. Alessandro Bogliolo in Galaţi.

More information and a video interview are available on the C4Rs website.

SmartRoadSense and the CROWD4ROADS project are cited in HORIZON, the EU Research & Innovation magazine:

The CROWD4ROADS project works through smartphones mounted in cars that can pick up changes in speed caused by bumps, holes or distributed roughness. This data can then be used by local authorities to know where they need to repair roads, which in turn makes their mobility sector more energy efficient.

Check out the full article online.

SmartRoadSense and the CROWD4ROADS project are cited in an article about open data, sharing economy, and grassroots crowd-sensing initiatives, in the September–October issue of “Onda Verde”, the magazine by the Italian Automobile Club (ACI).

Take a read online (in Italian).

You may have already noticed but… we have big plans for our project!

At the moment, only drivers on the Italian road network are able to use SmartRoadSense. The idea of opening up the service for more drivers was always in the back of our heads. However, only a few weeks ago, we started thinking seriously about how to make our platform available from other countries as well.

Days ago we took the first bold step: we moved our entire computing platform to Marche Cloud, the cloud service by Regione Marche (they are one of our partners in the CROWD4ROADS European project).

What does that mean? It means that we now have all the computing power that we need to receive and process data from other countries! More news coming soon.

The new and improved SmartRoadSense 3.0 is now ready, right on time for the holiday season, both for Apple iOS and Google Android.

The original SmartRoadSense app for Android was released in February 2015 and has been on the road for months, achieving almost 25.000 kms of tracked roads thanks to our beta-testers and early adopters!

In the meantime, the SmartRoadSense team has been feverishly working both on our infrastructure, the road quality measurement system and, of course, the mobile application.

SmartRoadSense 3.0 has been rewritten from the ground up, now including the following new features:

• At first launch, a short tutorial with guided setup (including an accelerometer calibration step) is displayed.
• Vehicle type and anchorage type can be specified for each recording to improve data quality and aggregation accuracy.
• Improved and more efficient opportunistic background upload (uses less data and consumes less power).
• Fixed GPS location tracking and suspension detection (if you forget turning off the app, it will stop recording automatically).
• Several stability improvements.

Let us know what you think here through the comments and leave a 5★ review on the store to support the project. We are eager to hear from you. Happy road-sensing!

Some pictures taken during the press conference of the CROWD4ROADS European project in Urbino.

The SmartRoadSense team: Alessandro Bogliolo, Antonio Esposito, Andrea Seraghiti, Lorenz Cuno Klopfenstein, Michele Sorcinelli, Brendan Paolini, Saverio Delpriori, Alberto Carini, Valerio Freschi, and Emanuele Lattanzi.

Alessandro Bogliolo, Vilberto Stocchi, Flavio Vetrano.

Vilberto Stocchi, dean of the University of Urbino.

Andrea Sergiacomi, Regione Marche.

Alessandro Bogliolo, project coordinator.

Gianluca Cecchetti, BlaBlaCar.

Ideas such as “sharing economy“ and “active citizenship” providing a sizable contribution to sustainability initiatives about road infrastructure, passenger transport, and traffic.

This is the main idea behind CROWD4ROADS (or “C4Rs” in short), the European project that, joining initiatives such as SmartRoadSense and BlaBlaCar, will leverage the impact of collective awareness, sustainbility, and social innovation on road networks.

The project will be officially presented on 3 December 2015 in Urbino (Italy) at Collegio Raffaello.

Download the press release (in Italian).

The community of SmartRoadSense users has reached more than 10,000 kms of monitored roads!

SmartRoadSense was launched on 21 February. Since then, thanks to its early adopters, SmartRoadSense has monitored and mapped more than 1% of Italian roads.

The net of coloured roads is growing fast, especially in the north of the peninsula. Join the SmartRoadSense community and monitor the quality of the roads you travel every day!