"Splatometer" Allows Distributed Bug Reports

Posted by timothy on Monday June 30, 2003 @07:21PM from the old-style-bugs dept.

Snags writes "The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds in the UK has invented a device they call a Splatometer. According to the BBC, the Independent, and others, they are planning to ask people all around the country to mount the device on their cars. Then, after a journey, it gets sealed and sent to a lab where the number and kind of bug splats are analyzed. This sounds like distributed data collection to me, taking advantage of the unused resources (bumper surface area) of a benevolent population, like SETI@Home does with CPU cycles. I wonder if they've considered some form of distributed analysis as well."

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Re:Bug Size? by fifedrum · 2003-07-01 01:31 · Score: 2, Interesting

If motorcyclists installed the collection plate over their mouths (or over any exposed skin) they would capture plenty of bees, lady bugs, moths and larger insects. That's where the largest ones impact when I ride.

Seriously though, the aerodynamic properties of the vehicle has something to do with size and location of impact?