The Application Idea Contest
About a year and a half ago the Samraksh Company introduced a new mote-scale radar. The BumbleBee is a coherent, pulsed Doppler radar offering rich information at a strikingly low price (i.e., $100 each as compared to as much as $4,000 to $5,000 each for previous mote-scale radars). The BumbleBee measures radial velocity directly allowing users to determine the sign of the velocity and measure the time structure of relative motion very precisely, even for small motions!
Applications of the BumbleBee
While the typical mote-scale sensors might be as simple as a temperature or humidity sensor, and is rarely more complex than a PIR motion detector, the BumbleBee radar provides rich information about the details of motion of targets in its environment (or the details of the motion of the environment itself).The BumbleBee is capable of measuring movements to a relative accuracy of about 3 mm in its core operational zone which is from 1.5 m to 9.5 m, with a radial velocity of 2.6 cm/s to 2.6 m/s, and with components of motion below 100 Hz which are movements that are representative of human movements. Thus the BumbleBee, although a good motion detector, is uniquely suited for a variety of motion analyses, including items like:
1. Estimating the relative range profile, as a function of time, for a dominant target within the scene.
2. Separating the returns from multiple targets with different motion patterns within the same scene.
3. Recognizing specific motions patterns associated with unique events.
4. Characterizing the motion of various background environments at various times.
For example, the Samraksh Company demonstrated the ability to differentiate humans from dogs based on differences in the leg motion. The gap between simple motion detection and attempting to infer whether the target is two-legged or four-legged based on the way it moves, is quite large, and the highest value WSN applications may well be within this gap. This platform provides a large benefit at a small cost to somewhat more simple motion analysis.
Idea Contest
The Samraksh Company suspects that there will be high return from effort focused on conceiving applications for the BumbleBee rada as the difference between applications for the BumbleBee and traditional WSN applications is vast. To stimulate the development of applications that benefit from an understanding of the motion the company announced today that it is sponsoring an Application Idea Contest. Researchers and hobbyists who are willing to share their ideas for utilizing rich motion information, especially within the context of WSNs, with the larger community are encouraged to submit short descriptions of their ideas. Two outside judges will select winning ideas, and each winner will receive a free BumbleBee radar! In addition community members will be asked to provide feedback on winning ideas. It is hoped that this feedback will further facilitate creativity.
Company co-founder Kenneth Parker said, “We hope to create a little community around the process of creating new application ideas.” The company hopes that every graduate student considering a thesis or dissertation in a closely related area will first submit a couple of ideas to the community along with hobbyists working on slightly unorthodox ideas who would be willing to share their quirky insights!
When pressed on the question of whether this is a “real” contest, Parker insisted that not every idea will be deemed a winner, but hopes there will be many.The Samraksch company has set aside 100 radars for potential contest winners in 2010.
The idea contest website is currently somewhat minimalistic, but the infrastructure is in place for creating more community services as the community develops. Users are encouraged to send their comments or request to WebMaster@samraksh.com as well as visit the 'Application Ideas' section of the Samraksh site.
Implementing Application Ideas
Originally the BumbleBee was packaged for use with the TelosB Mote platform, although users can wire the BumbleBee to almost any mote platform. User experience has shown that in order to exploit the rich information about motion more complex signal processing is sometimes required. Because the hardware support for integer multiplication on the TelosB is constrained, as it is not supported by default in TinyOS, many of these applications are better implemented on the IRIS or Imote2, both of which can support quite sophisticated integer Digital Signal Processing (DSP) algorithms. To assist researchers in quickly developing applications that more fully exploit the potential of the BumbleBee the Samraksh Company has created interface boards so that BumbleBee’s can be connected out of the box to either the IRIS or Imote2. Winners may request interface boards for the platform of their choice.
For information on Crossbow's TelosB, Imote2 or IRIS Mote platforms, click here.
For information on the BumbleBee radar from the Samraksh Company, click here.
