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The Future Of Wireless Sensor Networks
Frisky070802 writes "In the 12/03 Wired, Intel's Tiny Hope for the Future describes a fundamental transformation as Intel's Research director David Tennenhouse realized the importance of sensor networks. He saw a Berkeley project on 'motes,' little sensors that communicate on ad-hoc wireless networks. 'The company now foresees networks consisting of thousands of motes, located wherever there's a need for data collection, streaming real-time data to one another and to central servers. Intel imagines the day when every assembly line, soybean field, and nursing home on the planet will be peppered with motes, prodding factory foremen to replace faulty machines, farmers to water fields, and nurses to check on something unusual in room E214.' Intel was impressed enough with the technology to fund a whole 'lablet' to develop it. Intel sees a huge potential market in developing both the sensors and the computation to process the huge amounts of sensor information. If this rings any bells, note that the Intel lablets are also behind the Planetlab Internet emulator, previously discussed in Slashdot."
That's the beauty of an off-beat R&D lab. They're given free rein to develop just about anything without regard to need OR profit.
AT&T and IBM both funded labs like these for years. They were responsible for developing such novel and diverse things as transistors and scanning tunnelling microscopes. The goal is, of course, that they will develop a product that fills a real need, which in turn will create a demand for their product appeasing their shareholders.
I think it's absolutely terrific that some industries are able to risk investing in the totally unknown. It was truly a shame when Bell Labs dropped their unfettered research. It was also disappointing to see IBM drop research for all but computer-related work. But even so, their Zurich labs have recently come up with some novel storage mechanisms leveraging their decade-old scanning tunnelling work.
Regardless of whether these labs prove to be duds or if one of them creates the transistor of the 21st century, the money is being well spent. Exploring the unknown is always of value.
John