MobiCS: Mobile Platform for Combining Crowdsourcing and Participatory Sensing

Current participatory sensing approaches usually do not consider device carriers as intelligent participants in sensing processes. However, modern mobile communication devices allow users express their opinions and judgements which can complement to captured sensor data. In this paper we bring together different modes of mobile crowd sourcing into a general sensing platform which treats device carriers as intelligent problem solvers. We propose a conceptual architecture for versatile context-aware mobile crowd sourcing, and address issues related to data representation, quality control, trust and reputation management, and task allocation. To prove the potential advantages of the proposed conceptual architecture we developed MobiCS, a prototype platform which allows crowd sourcers formulate and distribute both sensing and human intelligence tasks to Android-powered mobile communication devices.