Vehicular Pollution Sensing

The traditional pollution sensing technology using expensive equipment at fixed locations has long been argued for its small coverage and inability to represent the dynamic nature of vehicular networks. Recent innovations in the sensing technologies have brought us affordable and portable air sensing devices. This makes it possible to redesign pollution sensing to include more participants, such as public transportation vehicles and volunteer personal vehicles. Data from these mobile mules can be aggregated into a real time fine grained pollution map, which will help to better understand the pollution from transportation systems. We built RUSense to collect pollution data from multiple types of mobile mules. For public transportation vehicles which will follow fixed routes, we assembled a fully functional sensing box, which can run on its own if only power supply is provided from vehicles. On the other hand, personal sensing devices have to be paired with smartphones. An aggregation server collects data and provides it to public in various ways.