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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.'"
yeah, that's the ticket. It's not to test equipment before the next Big Brother steps at all.
A Web of Sensors, Taking Earth's Pulse
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: May 10, 2005
Scientists are turning 30 acres of California forest into a futuristic vision of environmental study.
For free access to this article and more, you must be a registered member of NYTimes.com
...that NEON, which endeavors to study, document, and integrate our lives more closely into the natural world is named after a substance that has no known biological role?
Wouldn't having tons of sensors all over the place somehow contaminate the very environment they are trying to test? I mean.. animals aren't all oblivious to foreign objects in their world and are prone to changing behavior in response to them. I've seen documentaries about herds that move differently thanks to things like the Alaskan pipeline, roads across wild places in Africa, and the like. Lots of little sensors in the rivers, forests, plains, etc. would likely have some kind of impact. Plus, if there's millions of them, they are going to go clean them up someday, right.... right?
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Sensor Webs and Smart Dust and related tecnologies will prove valuable in ecological studies and environmental monitoring, but that's not the drive behind them.
In Vietnam the US military attempted to install networks of sensors - seismographs, detectors for urine and sweat, detectors for nitrogen compunds (explosives), movement detectors, proximity detectors - along known NLF supply lines and for perimeter defence. They were put in place by Special Forces teams and transmitted their data to overflying aircraft for targetting. Often they were woeful failures or could be spoofed by the NLF.
Here is the new generation, just ready for "assymetric warfare".
Having participtated in small scale ecology studies, I would guess that these senors will raise many more questions (which would be a good definition of the "new windows") than answers. Population ecology and the evolutionary biology that ties into it is a field with many more 'big' questions than most people realize.
In most of the primary literature I cover, for every possible cause of a behavior (such as migratory routes) that is eliminated, another 2 consistently appear (seriously). I think we will see some very interesting questions, rather than any definite answers (at least in the short term). I would definitely like to see this used with the arctic tern.
"The Times reports 'scientists want to deploy millions of these kinds of devices over large tracts for long periods, opening new windows on nature.'""
Well there goes any forays into the woods with your girlfriend.
does Heisenburg matter anymore?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Sorry to tell you this but real scientists in the real world usually dont base a whole lot of their research on hollywood movies, especially ones with obvious agendas such as this one. To be honest this is the type of movie anyone with any understanding of the scientific method finds extremely annoying as suddenly everyone walking around is an "expert" on global warming because they saw this movie. Just because you saw it on TV doesnt make it true.
drunk chemists
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.
opening new windows on nature.
Which ofcourse will be closed with a simple click on the right top corner by politicians who think that the short term economy is much more important.
Not thinking about how much it will cost (in terms of money and health) in the long run to undo (if still possible) the stupid decisions made now.
So I can install wmweather on my desktop and get information about how the weather is outside since I don't see it from my cubicle. Even if it looks a bit weird that I get weather data for a city in Germany from a site in the United States. :-)
Didn't Larry Niven invent sensor webs in the Ringworld series?