• August 30th, 2016

For decades, the travel diary has been one of the transportation researcher’s most valuable tools. Participants in travel studies use diaries to record where they go, how they get there, and other key information. But the technology of the travel diary, which relies on participants to record their movements and can lack fine detail, is decidedly 20thcentury.

Wearable sensors have opened up new levels of data granularity for transportation researchers. Wrist sensors, for example, can tell researchers with pinpoint accuracy where participants have been, the routes they’ve taken, and how much time they spend traveling.