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Sensor Webs Unwire Ecology
jonbrewer writes "Pioneered by CENS, Sensor Networks are rapidly becoming a mainstream environmental monitoring tool. The NY Times has an article today with a quick tech overview and info on RiverNet, EarthScope, NEON, and Neptune. The Times reports 'scientists want to deploy millions of these kinds of devices over large tracts for long periods, opening new windows on nature.'"
This reminds me of an article in the new "Innovators Section" as seen in Time magazine.
Essentially, it discusses Kris Pister who developed Smart Dust - a wireless network of sensors, called motes. Each mote has a chip about the size of a grain of rice that detects and records things like termperature and motion at its location. The motes have minisule radio transmitters that talk to otehr motes. With a single network of 10,000 motes, the upper limit, you could cover some 9 sq. miles - and get information about each point along the way!
Anyway, here's a brief description:
innovationwatch.com
Here is the Dust, Inc. homepage:
http://www.dust-inc.com/
Frightening technology in many respects, but I can't help but smile at the thought of the brilliance behind it all.
To confirm you're not a script, please piss in my ear.
Sensor Network research has been going on for quite some time. CENS isn't the only place doing the research. Some of the original work actually came from SCADDS from USC/ISI, with some of the same people now at CENS. All the UCs are very involved in Sensor Networks, Berkeley for example was the orginator of the current most popular hardware, the motes, now manufactured by Crossbow. Intel also makes their own version of the motes, though they are not sold comertially yet.
Most of the hardware runs in a specific OS called TinyOS, which is open source. Other hardware, like the Stargates (also from Crossbow) run an arm version of debian.
You can find lots of neat info about Sensor Networks from the specialized conferences like Sensys, IPSN, etc.
Most of the projects done with Sensor Networks have been geared towards the biological monitoring fields. However, the funding comes in from NSF as well as DARPA so sometimes it is security/military based.
It's an interesting world out there...
cl
Reply . . . let's get it over with.
I just finished a course on this particular subject actually. A few fun comments.
In one biological study in Maine (Great Duck Island) it seems that the birds on the island they were monitoring had been attacking the sensor motes. In another case these devices offered the first look ever at night time migration patterns of zebras.(aka ZebraNet)
As far as military applications go the one that I am most aware of is DARPA's sniper net. It's a system of audio sensors designed to locate and pinpoint snipers based on gunshot triangulation.
There are some earthquake structural monitoring systems being built in California as well.
However things to be cautioned about. The smaller motes do not have very much in the way of processing power(ie can't even do floating point) so there's no need to get really paranoid about secret cameras. Most of the motes with cameras are big enough you'd probably notice them if you were looking. Primarily the motes are equipped with various sensor banks for things such as Light, Temp, Vibration, Audio, etc etc. Also if you're interested in working with the software for these things the primary OS people use is TinyOS. However a word of caution, if you want to muck around inside the inner workings of TinyOS you're pretty much on your own and some of the things are already legacy. The coolest part of sensor nets, in my opinion,is the ability to do in network data processing as the data is funneled through the network. Oh and there's already a Database system designed for use in these systems. It's name is TinyDB(surprising naming scheme I know)
Cheers
I don't care what you say, all I need is my Wumpabet soup.
Ideal free distribution studies (the sort which could be conducted over larger distances using this new technology) are complicated because the individuals involved require (by definition) both (1) perfect knowledge of the foraging sites and (2) unlimited freedom to travel to those sites, with negligible cost to do so.
... ideal free has been studied with foraging seals to guppies and many things in between, it's part of the important theory of optimal foraging.
the difficult thing is when real world applications have a siginificant effect on results
but to answer your question - sometimes the study finds that there is no ideal free distribution - this can be due to individual competition disrupting the distribution or something such as difficulty in assessing patch quality. in this way, one study leads to 2 questions (and 2+ studies).