EMOV
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A mobile application designed to conduct experiments inside public buses in Chile, capturing biometric, GPS, and activity data to improve transportation studies.
EMOV is an Android mobile application developed at Transapp in collaboration with the Departamento de Ingeniería Civil at the Universidad de Chile. The app enables users to participate in real-world experiments while riding public buses, helping researchers gather data to improve urban mobility systems.
How It Works
The app connects to a wearable band, designed by the university, to collect biometric data such as heart rate and stress levels during commutes. In parallel, it uses GPS tracking and activity recognition to contextualize the collected information within the user’s journey.
Participants in the study receive questions triggered by geographic zones (points of interest) to assess their emotional states, comfort levels, or contextual experiences while using the transport system.
All data is transmitted to a remote server where it is processed and made available through a dashboard with visualizations, charts, and downloadable raw datasets for researchers. This infrastructure allows for comprehensive analysis of passenger experience, enabling improvements in the quality of public transport services.
By combining biometric sensing, mobility tracking, and survey feedback, EMOV provides a powerful and flexible platform for transportation research, designed to adapt to the dynamic needs of both academic and public institutions.
Challenges
Seamless Hardware-Software Integration: One of the greatest technical challenges was achieving reliable Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) communication with a custom biometric band — across a wide range of Android devices and unpredictable real-world transit environments. At the same time, the app needed to continuously collect GPS and activity data, process it on-device, and synchronize everything with a remote server — all without draining the battery or sacrificing performance, even in areas with poor connectivity.
Precision-Triggered Survey Logic: Adding to the complexity was the development of a geo-fenced survey system. Questions had to be triggered precisely when users passed through specific points of interest — not a moment too early or too late — and without disrupting the user experience
Resilient and Robust Architecture: Behind the scenes, EMOV also had to guarantee data resilience: if the app crashed, the phone restarted, or an experiment was interrupted, nothing could be lost. These challenges pushed the project to embrace a highly robust and thoughtful architecture that could stand up to the realities of life on the move.
Key Learnings
Mastering BLE and Real-Time Data Handling: The project deepened my understanding of working with BLE devices in Flutter and handling real-time sensor data.
Designing for Resilience and Offline Use: It reinforced the importance of building resilient, offline-capable mobile applications — especially when used in environments with unpredictable connectivity.
Understanding Public Mobility Through Tech: I also gained valuable experience in translating academic research goals into practical, technical solutions that could scale and operate reliably in public settings. Collaborating with transportation engineers and researchers expanded my perspective on how digital tools can support urban infrastructure and policy decision-making.
Tech Stack
My work on EMOV focused on developing the mobile application using Flutter, with an emphasis on Android due to the need for Bluetooth integration and background processing. The communication with the university’s custom biometric band was implemented using the flutter_blue_plus plugin, enabling reliable Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) data collection in real-world transit scenarios.
To capture contextual data, the app integrated Android’s Activity Recognition API along with geolocator packages, allowing real-time tracking of user movement and location throughout each experiment.
The mobile app was designed following Clean Architecture principles, with clear separation between domain, presentation, application, and infrastructure layers. I also implemented service components for local persistence, custom logging, and resilient data synchronization, ensuring that experiment data was safely stored and transmitted — even when the device was offline or the app was interrupted.
Conclusion
EMOV was a unique opportunity to bring together applied research, mobile technology, and real-world impact. Working on this project allowed me to tackle complex technical challenges while contributing to an initiative that supports academic research and public transportation innovation in Chile. It was a meaningful experience that strengthened my skills in mobile development, architecture design, and real-time data handling — and reaffirmed the value of building user-focused tools that serve a broader social purpose.
