Author : Vinay Gaba

There are a lot of repetitive tasks being performed by humans every day. This predictable repetitive behavior can be capitalized to perform certain tasks that need human intervention. Many researchers see today the great opportunity this presents to crowd source valuable information. Human-based computation (HBC), human-assisted computation, ubiquitous human computing or distributed thinking (by analogy to distributed computing) is a computer science technique in which a machine performs its function by outsourcing certain steps to humans, usually as micro work. In this paper, I present an Android application which makes use of the common habit of today’s smartphone users of checking their phones at regular intervals. This behavior can be used to answer simple yes/no questions or instances where a single tap is enough for giving out relevant information. This can be used in scenarios where machine results are not full proof and need some kind of human intervention to confirm the results. For example, Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software is known to have an accuracy rate between 81% to 99%. This method can be used to validate the results of the OCR software.

Keywords: Crowdsourcing, human computation, lock screen, mobile crowdsourcing, microtasking

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.4, No.5 (Oct-2014)