iCO2: A Networked Game for Collecting Large-Scale Eco-Driving Behavior Data

iCO₂ is a networked game that aims to collect human driving behavior data at scale and help researchers better understand how people apply eco-driving practices. iCO₂ is an integrated multiplatform game that can be accessed via Web client on Facebook and iPad clients, and supports a shared traffic experience among its users. Here, the authors describe iCO₂ and discuss two key efforts and their results. First, they investigated the scalability of Distributed Virtual Environments (DiVE), the networking framework they developed for multiuser 3D virtual world applications. The "area of interest" method that DiVE uses was tested in a laboratory setting and showed promising results on two important metrics: bandwidth and frames per second. Second, they ran a small marketing campaign to collect data from users interacting with the iPad version of iCO₂ "in the wild." They then analyzed the users\´ acceleration behavior, an important aspect of eco-driving.