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."

Comments

Potential application

[mattjb0010]

This could be really useful for monitoring kids at the sleep lab where I do some work. It's hard enough just getting a myriad (EEG, EOG, ECG, O2, CO2, etc.) of sensors stuck on a kid, the fact that you then end up with huge mass of wires causes all sorts of problems, making it hard for the kid to get to sleep, plus there's the tendancy to pull on the leads, totally destroying the signal (often several times a night).

A deepness in the sky

[Scrameustache]

By Vernor Vinge is a very good book that uses that concept a lot.

It discuss, amongts other topics, the consequences of total information awarness brought by a technology similar to this (but better, because its sci-fi, not sci-fact).

Re:originality?

[davidgay]

Some amount of misinformation, as usual ;-) A few corrections:

- The Berkeley lablet was *not* created because of excitement over sensor networks. The Berkeley (and the other) lablets were created as part of a new approach to industrial research labs, in close collaboration with universities. Sensor networks was the first project undertaken at the Berkeley lablet (and, given that it was mentioned, PlanetLab was the second).

- The UC Berkeley project in question is (currently) the NEST project (http://webs.cs.berkeley.edu), funded by DARPA. This project was inspired by the Smart Dust project, but its emphasis has mostly been on the software (operating systems, languages, networking, applications, etc) rather than the hardware.

David Gay - not speaking for Intel ;-)

Nursing homes being done

[nb caffeine]

The company I interned for this summer had some of this going on: we had tags we would place on residents for certain purposes (ones that would detect urine in an adult diaper, would alert nurse if a resident pissed themself, and wouldn't sit in thier own piss till a nurse came to check, cut down on urinary tract infections, as well as ones that would detect if a person with alzimers wandered too far from their room, that sort of thing). While not in an ad hoc network style, these would at least alert the nearest CNA that something was ary. And if the alert went unchecked, it would go up the chain of command, possibly to the point where the head nurse or director of the home would be notified, and someones ass would be in trouble. Was an interesting application, though i wasnt lucky enough to have worked on them. I got to work on the CRM software. woo and stuff.

Let's not forget the military applications

[t0qer]

Of a B-52 Bomber raining motion sensors down on a city. I doubt they would have much tactical use in a non-urban enviroment due to it being so spread out, but in cities being able to tell what's moving on every street corner would kick ass.

Re:Let's not forget the military applications

[Comatose51]

Not true. According to my professor who's working on sensor networks, the military has already tried them out in Iraq. Iraq is well-suited for such things because it is mostly deserts.

Sensor networks would have a lot of difficulties in an urban setting because of buildings. Buildings present challenges to localization of the sensor network. Two sensors can be right next to each other but still can't communicate because a wall is in the way. Furthermore, GPS is hard to receive in an urban setting. Thus, the network must first localize relative to each other then hope that a few of the nodes can recieve GPS to serve as "beacons" to localize the rest of the network.

In other words, sensor networks are more likely to succeed in an non-urban environment first than an urban environment.

Localization is a major problem for these networks because of the lack of processing power and lower transmission radius. However, localization will inevitably involve graph theory and graphs are not the easiest thing to solve. Thus, you can see the trade-offs as the nodes get smaller and smaller and have less resources available.

Re:originality?

[calidoscope]

These things have not really been comprehensively explored before.

I beg to differ. A group at Oak Ridge National Labs has been working on this kind of thing for several years now. They were also trying to work on low cost, very low power consumption, self organizing. Their intent was to have the sensors operating in an industrial enviroment and they've done a lot of work optimizing the RF section for minimal susceptibility to interference.

The big draw for industrial users is that adding wiring is expensive and that they hope the sensors will cost about the same as a few inches of wiring (with all of the associated costs).

Similar work has been done for several years in respect to the self healing mine fields - having a bunch of mobile mines that will fill in the gap left when a mine disappears. This also requires low power consumption and self organization.

Convenience vs. privacy...

[TheRealStyro]

Let see, thousands of tiny mote sensors spread throughout your living environment. Does the convenience factor outweigh the privacy factor? I can see law enforcement and marketing corps loving this whole idea. Some future attorney general might try to make embedding these into most consumer products and fabric a requirement.

Law enforcement could use these motes for cheap surveillance and community monitoring. Just think of it - some of the motes would be equipped with mics and DSPs and could be easily enabled by the consumer and/or law enforcement. Other motes would register heat/cool (for A/C & heat control) and could also track people and animals. Heck, specialized motes could be built to detect illegal drug use (pot/crack fumes). Detectives wouldn't even have to get next to your house seeing how you bought that slick wireless router (you had to since owning a wired router would brand you a terrorist with something to hide).

Madison Ave marketing would also love motes. Advertisers could use motes to determine the best time to call you (when you are home) and the best time customize your commercials (when you watch tv). How about a great rate on home insurance - only it will be terminated the moment the sensors pickup impending doom (water leak, structural damage, etc). With consumer electronics going wireless advertisers could have a field day tracking what you buy and how you act to determine what they should market to you.

Then think about the convenience - the A/C-heater could adjust the temp for the room you are in, the whole house, or some pattern possibly based on your behavior. Lights that turn on only for the rooms that are occupied, and to the level the person in that room wants. How about motes that detect that you haven't moved in 24 hours and alerts rescue/coroner. Hey, motes that listen for and act upon your command - "computer - music - light jazz - New Orleans bar after 2am" (motes play recording of bartender telling you the bar is closing and to get the hell out - only not that politely). Motes could tell you your oldest son is smoking in his room, daughter has lit some candles, teenage son is 'enjoying himself', the baby could use changing, and the wife is cheating on you (that wasn't your stain on the bed sheets). All that and more...

The motes could make your life great - in exchange for some privacy. What the heck, you have nothing to worry about as long as you are a law abiding, patriotic (to the current admin, not to the Constitution), well-adjusted citizen...