Through May 3, smartphone owners can play “Human vs Machine” at UK bus stops for the chance to win £1,000 in tech vouchers.

 In a bid to raise awareness of both NFC (near field communication) and QR (Quick Response) technologies, bus stops throughout the UK are getting interactive and offering smartphone users the chance to win £1,000 in tech vouchers.

To be in with a chance of winning, entrants will have to take on and beat ADi, a robot quizmaster, in a smartphone game rather fittingly called "Human vs Machine." Most flagship smartphones, with the notable exception of the iPhone, now support NFC technology, which allows users to transfer data and share files simply by tapping one enabled handset against another, and therefore a simple tap against the tag is enough to start gaming at one of the 10,000 bus stops that are supporting the promotion.

For non-NFC-enabled smartphone owners, a QR tag can be scanned by the phone's camera in order to take part.

The nationwide campaign, which runs until May 3, is designed not only to raise awareness of NFC -- a technology that many still believe will eventually replace money, credit and debit cards as a payment method -- but also of the content it can access. When the competition closes in May, people who would otherwise be very bored waiting for a bus will be able to tap their phones against the shelter and access movie trailers, video clips, download vouchers and promotions and access information on the local area including aboutrestaurants or places of interest.

Since it started rolling out on mobile devices, NFC has failed to capture the public's imagination as a mobile payment solution, but the technology is a key component of many major transit systems. Metro card systems in London, New York Tokyo, France, Singapore and China all work via NFC and being able to tap a smartphone on a ticket terminal as an automatic means of buying a ticket is proving popular in many cities, especially for tourists.

Earlier this year, Transport for London, the organization that oversees the London Underground metro system as well as overground rail and bus routes in the English capital, announced that it was trialing the use of NFC enabled credit cards as an alternative to paper tickets on bus routes and hopes to extend the scheme to include NFC-enabled smartphones before the end of 2013.