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The all-seeing net

February 11, 2007

There's long been talk of what John Seely Brown dubs "ecological computing" and what others call "pervasive computing" - the use of a multitude of wireless sensors to hook the physical world up to the Internet - but not much has come of the idea to date. That may be about to change, though, as the cost of sensors falls, as scientists learn more deploying them in the environment, and as military and commercial applications proliferate.

The Associated Press today has an interesting article about the work going on at UCLA's Center for Embedded Networked Sensing, which has a big grant from the National Science Foundation to pioneer the deployment of so-called "wireless motes" that can be used to monitor physical spaces. The center's headquarters is covered with

dozens of miniature, low-resolution cameras and sensors. They're wirelessly linked to computers throughout the 6,000-square-foot space, keeping tabs on traffic flow in public areas and monitoring temperature, humidity and acoustics. The building serves as a testing ground for developing and perfecting wireless sensing technology to connect major chunks of the real world to the Internet.

The technology is "quickly catching on," says the article, "attracting the attention of the military, academics and corporations. Just as the Internet virtually connected people with personal computers, the prospect of wireless arrays sprinkled in buildings, farmland, forests and hospitals promise[s] to create unprecedented links between people and physical locations.

Such monitoring also, of course, raises a lot of security and privacy issues, which researchers are struggling to address. Another big obstacle is the lack of standards, as most of the systems built so far are incompatible with one another. Nevertheless, startups in this space, like Dust Networks and Arch Rock, may finally start reaping some big commerical rewards. The walls, it seems, will soon have eyes.

Posted by nick at February 11, 2007 01:35 PM

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A couple of interesting areas of work.

Bruce Khan, Rochester Institute of Technology demonstrated flexographic printing of environmental sensors at the printed electronics conference, 2005. You also have the commercially available MetalJet 6000 system by CIT (Conductive Inkjet Technology) which uses inkjet & metalisation techniques to produce individual circuits at high speeds (km per hour speeds at sub 100 micron resolutions).

The use of printing (especially mass printing techniques) of electronics with organic semiconductors and in some cases nano-particle solutions is seen as a way of reducing the cost of sensors / RFIDs significantly.

Printing of both electronic and physical structure is a route to commoditisation of the manufacturing process - but that's another story.

My favourite example of networked sensors is Natalie Jeremijenko Feral Robots project which I came across in early 2005. This pack of networked dogs with added sensors was released at a site in San Diego to investigate and create maps of volatile organic compound emissions.

Not only is it cute, but also incredibly useful (in terms of results and educational value).

Of course for a general reading on the impact of these things (which are gradually getting the term "Spimes") see Bruce Stirling's book on the Internet of Things.

Posted by: Simon at February 12, 2007 10:57 AM

Actually it's Bruce Sterling - Shaping Things. Soz about that.

Posted by: Simon at February 12, 2007 11:05 AM

The all-seeing net

February 11, 2007

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