Crossbow Announces IMB400 Imote2 Multimedia Board

Building on its popular Imote2 advanced wireless sensor platform, Crossbow Technology announced the new Imote2 Multimedia Board (IMB400), an integrated camera sensor board that simplifies the capture of rich media content for wireless sensor network applications. The IMB400 board adds rich media capabilities to wireless sensor platforms. 

Ralph Kling, Chief Architect for Crossbow Technology said “For the first time visual and audio data can be easily added to wireless sensor applications. This opens up new possibilities for wireless sensor applications, including for example, surveillance, machine vision, object tracking, animal behavior surveys, and elder care monitoring in locations and environments that would otherwise be too costly to observe with traditional monitoring systems.”

The Imote2 Multimedia Board offers a compact, power efficient solution due to its integration of camera, audio and motion detection functionality into one platform. The built-in camera can handle high-quality images with resolutions up to 640x480 pixels and 30 fps, along with audio at sampling rates of up to 48kHz.
Instead of using compute intensive image analysis to detect motion, the IMB400 uses a Passive InfraRed (PIR) sensor to pick up movement, which then activates the camera allowing for its operation as a low power device. These images can subsequently be stored, locally processed and transmitted with accompanying sound.

In addition to the PIR sensor, key subsystems include a color image and video camera chip along with an audio capture and playback CODEC. The board is supported under TinyOS, with future support planned for Linux, SOS and the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework. For more information and to order this exciting new platform, visit Crossbow's site here.

Call for Papers: the 5th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems (DCOSS '09)

DCOSS is one of the premier conferences for sensor network research. It is intended to cover several aspects of distributed computing in sensor systems such as high level abstractions and models, systematic design methodologies, signal and information processing, algorithms, analysis and applications. Many of those who will be demonstrating are featured Crossbow customers.

Distributed sensor systems have become a highly active research area due to their potential for providing diverse new capabilities. Such systems allow intelligent dense monitoring of physical environments. The focus of this conference is on distributed computing issues in large-scale networked sensor systems (including algorithms, applications, systematic design techniques and tools, and in-network signal and information processing).

June 7 - 10, 2009, Marina Del Rey, USA                

IMPORTANT DATES
Submission Deadline: 11:59PM EST Jan 25, 2009
Notification: March 24, 2009
Camera Ready: March 31, 2009

Detailed submission guidelines coming soon on http://www.dcoss.org

Authors are invited to submit original unpublished manuscripts that demonstrate current research on computational aspects of distributed sensor systems. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Computation and programming models
• Energy models, minimization, awareness
• Distributed collaborative information processing
• Detection and tracking
• Theoretical performance analysis: complexity, correctness, scalability
• Abstractions for modular design
• Fault tolerance and security
• Languages, operating systems
• Task allocation, reprogramming and reconfiguration
• Dynamic resource management
• Scalable, heterogeneous architectures (node and system-level)
• Middleware interfaces, communication and processing primitives
• Design, simulation and optimization tools for deployment and operation
• Design automation and application synthesis techniques
• Closed-loop control for sensing and actuation
•  Case studies: lessons from real world deployments
• Network coding and compression

The conference will be co-located with several closely related workshops,and will provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to present their contributions related to the above high-level aspects of distributed sensor systems. In addition to contributed papers, the meeting will also include keynote addresses by leading researchers, a panel discussion, and a poster session.

For more information click here.

Interface your OWN sensors to eKo!

Crossbow's new eKo system has not only brought wireless sensor networks into the heart of precision agriculture, the system now also offers a quick and easy solution for anyone wanting to incorporate wireless sensor networks into their own outdoor monitoring solution. Whether they are looking to use eKo for environmental monitoring and research, urban monitoring, pollution detection, etc., this system is on its way to being the wireless sensor networking solution for any outdoor sensing requirement regardless of sensor type. eKo is fully packaged for the elements, solar-powered and ready to use out-of-the-box. This platform now provides users with a solution that requires little effort for complete customization with the new ESB developer's kit. The first phase of this kit has now been released to all eKo users.

eKo nodes (EN2100) can interface to many different types of sensors. Each of the node’s four sensor ports has a 6-pin connector that programmably interfaces to either analog or digital sensors, and each port has the ability to support two different sensors. Crossbow has created a standard interface (ESB: Environmental Sensor Bus) to communicate with a wide variety of sensors through these ports. 

Phase 1 of Crossbow's ESB developer’s kit allows users to interface their own simple analog sensors that do not require any additional signal or power conditioning to the eKo node. Users will only need to program the self-identification EEPROM and wire the sensors to the connector. The EEPROM embedded in the sensor’s connector is read by the port during power-up, and this information tells the node how to communicate with the sensor and contains parameters such as the required operating voltage and power-up time. After the information is read, the node programmably changes the pins according to the ESB requirements.  To request details on using Phase 1 of the ESB Developer's kit with your eKo system, visit Crossbow's site here.

Phase 2 of this kit release will support simple analog sensors requiring additional signal conditioning and/or power conditioning. These sensors use the external interface circuit between the eKo node and the sensor. The self-identification EEPROM is embedded in the Switchcraft connector.

Phase 3 will provide support for complex digital sensors that require signal conditioning, power boost or intelligent communication. These sensors use an external interface circuit between the eKo node and the sensor. They do not require that the EEPROM is embedded in the cable as the self-identification information is contained in the microprocessor. 

As an example of interfacing a simple sensor to eKo, Crossbow has recently integrated the MaxBotix MaxSonar range finder along with an air temperature sensor on the same connector.  The MaxSonar is an accurate, very low cost, ultra-sonic range finder that can run directly from the eKo battery supply at very low current. Also, of interest is to measure the ambient air temperature at the same time. Both of these sensors can be wired to a single eKo port connector.

The entire assembly can easily be mounted in PVC pipe fixtures for outdoor deployment. Once the two sensors are wired a Dallas DS2431 1Wire EEPROM is mounted into the sensor Switchcraft connector. Finally the EEPROM is programmed with the self-identification information. This is done using a programming board and PC program from Dallas Semiconductor. A mating Switchcraft connector is wired to the board to allow the sensor cable to be attached directly and the EEPROM then programmed.

The simplicity of integrating unique sensors with eKo, a fully packaged ready-to-use outdoor wireless monitoring device, enables users to deploy wireless sensor networks quickly, easily and effectively in a way they never have before. To request details on Phase 1 of the ESB Developer's kit, visit Crossbow's site here.

iFit, UbiFit, Wii all be Fit

In today's world of excitement and constant stimulation it is sad to note that most people are not fit. We are constantly sitting - at work in our cubicles, at home in front of the TV, on the couch playing video games, staring into our computer screens without moving... the busy lives we lead do not allow us to focus on our fitness. This trend has been noticed by organizations, researchers and companies worldwide. It has even taken over the gaming world. As I turned off my Wii system the other night after a rousing session of Guitar Hero, I began to think about Nintendo's new Wii Fit device. The idea of the Wii Fit is to offer "an environment in which working out is less daunting and as a result enjoyable -- fun, even." Imagine having the capabilities of the Wii Fit in a mobile device that can monitor your activity all the time. The idea of fitness and self image is nothing new to society but with the various technologies being employed it is becoming even easier to improve your fitness and be aware of your body's activity. So why don't UbiFit...?

Researchers at University of Washington and Intel Research Seattle have been investigating how ubiquitous computing can help encourage people to sustain an increased level of physical activity that can be determined by developing a device that can be used to monitor a person's physical activity and fitness. This change is only possible by sensing the person's physical activities (i.e. walking, sitting, etc.), modeling this information and supporting real-time awareness and feedback goals with automated journaling and methods to motivate sustained behavior changes. UbiFit is geared to improving fitness through mobile devices. Now instead of calculating the steps you took with your pedometer and logging how many miles you ran, etc., your UbiFit system will collect and store all of that data for you for real-time analysis. This unique mobile sensing platform is built around the Imote2 platform. The Imote2 is an advanced wireless platform designed for data rich wireless sensor networks requring a higher bandwidth than the traditional Mote devices. Its high performance capability and small size made it ideal for this application.

In the UbiFit project, researchers are investigating how ubiquitous computing can help encourage people to sustain an increased level of physical activity. Overweight and obesity, which are linked to several serious health problems, have become a global epidemic, affecting over one billion adults worldwide. While the medical community agrees that physical activity and fitness are essential to addressing this epidemic, many adults have difficulty increasing and then maintaining physical activity in their everyday lives. Enter UbiFit. Embedded activity recognition systems typically have three main components such as 1) a low-level sensing module that continuously gathers relevant information about activities using microphones, accelerometers, light sensors, 2) a feature processing and selection module that processes the raw sensor data into features that help discriminate between activities, and 3) a classification module that uses the features to infer what activity an individual or group of individuals is engaged in and analyze the data against the individuals set goals.

The sensor component of the UbiFit system consists of the 'Mobile Sensing Platform' (MSP). This device has ten built-in sensors such as a 3D accelerometer, 2D compass, barometer, humidity, visible light, infrared light, temperature with UART, GPIO breakouts for additional sensors. The wearable MSP devices have 2GB flash storage and uses the Linux OS. The raw data is collected from the sensors on the MSP and fed to the Imote2. This data is then sent to a cellular or PDA like device. The feature of the UbiFit system that makes it appealing to users is its client interface called UbiFit garden. The UbiFit garden uses the on-body sensing, real-time statistical modeling of the  activity data and its novel personal display to encourage physical activity. This is not limited to detecting a specific pre-planned physical activity such as using the Nintendo Wii Fit or Nike+ system. It is not just a physical activity detection device like a pedometer. The UbiFit garden encompasses all these areas and rolls it into an easy to use and carry personal fitness monitoring device. Set up to be background on a users cellular device, the UbiFit garden background blooms on the user's mobile phone providing key information at-a-glance such as whether they are having an active/inactive week, whether they have met their weekly goal, etc. and encouraging them to incorporate physical activity into everyday life.

For more details on this project visit their site here, and for more details on the Imote2 platform visit Crossbow's site here. Now, get up off of that couch, strap on those walking shoes and UbiFit!

San Francisco Chronicle Features Crossbow's eKo System

Crossbow's eKo system has triggered an agricultural revolution in the world of precision agriculture and environmental monitoring. This cutting edge system was recently featured in the San Francisco Chronicle and the story can be viewed here.

(08-31) 15:50 PDT -- On a rolling hillside planted with row upon row of Cabernet grapes, viticulturist Jason Cole waxes eloquent about the elusive notion of 'terroir,' a term French farmers use to describe the 'je ne sais quoi' of crops harvested in any given locale.

"Grapes, chocolates, coffee, these are all incredibly good at soaking up their environments and spitting them out in their fruits," said Cole, who oversees the preening and pampering of more than 500 acres of vines planted at the Stagecoach Vineyard in Napa County.

That vineyard is a test bed for a new wireless sensing technology that measures soil wetness, wind speed, temperature and humidity to take the statistical pulse of the vineyard's microclimates to help determine how often and how much to irrigate. The system being tested at Stagecoach was developed by Crossbow Technology, a privately held, 90-person San Jose company that has created inertial guidance sensors for the aviation industry and researched the use of wireless sensor networks for the federal Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Other manufacturers of microclimate sensing systems include the Austrian company Adcon Telemetry, as well as Ranch Systems of Novato and Grape Networks of San Ramon.

The sensors that Cole is using at Stagecoach Vineyard represent one manifestation of a broader phenomenon called precision agriculture - the attempt to tailor the cultivation of large stretches of land so that the smallest possible subsection of a farm gets special but automated attention. In the Midwest, with its amber waves of grain, precision agriculture has been synonymous with huge tractors equipped with global positioning systems to keep the rows straight, for instance. But in California, the land of fruits, nuts and other specialty crops, precision agriculture has been expressed in technologies such as Cole's efforts to use wireless sensors to compute 'terroir.'

"The way that growers for many years decided whether it was time to water was they stuck their thumb in the ground," said Robert Robinson, vice president for Crossbow's wireless sensor division.

The basic field kit that Crossbow released earlier this year, priced at $3,359, consists of three sensing nodes that feed data collected in the field through an electronic gateway into what is essentially a Web page that can be viewed from any Internet-connected device. Crossbow says that basic configuration can divine the microclimate of sites as varied as a 4-acre plot of land in hilly and varied terrains such as Napa and 20 acres in the flatter, homogeneous Central Valley. Additional kits can extend the sensing network, wirelessly and indefinitely, over hill and dale.

Moisture sensors
Kneeling alongside a vine at Stagecoach Vineyard, Cole explained how the system, in addition to measuring temperature and humidity with above-ground sensors, sticks a virtual thumb deep into the soil in the form of two moisture sensors, one at a depth of 1 foot and the other at 3 feet.



"The whole point is to monitor what the roots are experiencing," Cole said. "Watering grapes is one of the most important factors to wine quality. You want to stress the vines in order to condense the flavor into smaller berries."

UC Davis Professor Stu Pettygrove, a soil specialist who has tracked precision agriculture in California, said the water-sensitivity of wine grapes, coupled with their high value relative to other agriculture products, make them a good candidate for this high-tech approach. But how many other California crops fit that description? Pistachios were the only other example Pettygrove offered. He said water-stinginess at just the right point helps burst the shells, making pistachios easy to eat.

Tree crops experiment
Professor Michael Delwiche, chairman of biological and cultural engineering at UC Davis, has experimented with wireless sensing systems that precisely apply water - sometimes mixed with chemical fertilizers in a process called fertigation - to tree crops like nectarines. So far, however, the cost benefit is not there in production orchards, he said.

Delwiche said wireless sensing systems and precision watering might find a home in commercial nurseries and flower-growing greenhouses, where the impetus is not purely economic - as measured by greater crop value - so much as it is regulatory. "They are under environmental regulation not to have runoff from the nursery location," Delwiche said. Eventually, manufacturers will try to improve the performance and bring down costs to encourage broader adoption of wireless sensing systems, he said. Meanwhile, the technology remains economical in niche markets - or exceptionally arid locales.

"In Israel, where water is so dear and they have the technological infrastructure, they're doing a lot of work in this area," Delwiche said. But at Stagecoach Vineyard, where cachet is central to the business plan, the cost of wireless sensing technology is hardly a barrier to the pursuit of quality.

"We're trying to grasp the 'terroir', but you'll always be grasping, you'll never have it all," Cole said.

For more information on the eKo system, visit the eKo site here.

Extending Our Senses into the Physical World

The picture of a future with wireless sensor networks-webs of sensory devices that function without a central infrastructure--is quickly coming into sharper focus through the work of Los Alamos National Laboratory computer scientist Sami Ayyorgun. Using Crossbow's TelosB Motes in their research, proponents of this new technology see a world with deployments to improve a wide range of operations.

Engineers could wirelessly monitor miles of gas and oil pipelines stretching across arid land for ruptures, damage, and tampering. Rescue workers might detect signs of life under the rubble of a collapsed building after an earthquake, thanks to a network of sensors inside the structure. Armed forces could keep an eye on a combat zone or a vast international border via a sensor network that could promptly provide alerts of any intrusion or illicit trafficking.

"It's not easy to envision the impacts that sensor networks will make, both socially and economically," Ayyorgun said. "Like many other researchers, I think they are likely to rival the impact that the Internet has made on our lives."

Ayyrogun has developed a new communication scheme that brings the reality of these and other applications a step closer. He has shown for the first time that concurrent gains in many measures of performance are possible, including connectivity, energy, delay, throughput, system longevity, coverage, and security.

In recognition of the multifaceted improvements Ayyorgun's research makes on state-of-the-art technology in this field, his recent paper, "Towards a Self-organizing Stochastic-Communications Paradigm for Wireless Ad-hoc/Sensor Networks," has been nominated for the Best-Paper Award from a pool of more than 250 manuscripts at the International Conference on Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS) of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Ayyorgun will present the paper at this prestigious meeting of the IEEE beginning September 29, in Atlanta, Georgia.

Like cell phones, wireless sensor networks depend on small, independently powered devices, often called motes, to communicate. But unlike cell phones, which always relay their signal through a base station such as a tower, multihop sensor motes use each other to relay signals, transmitting communiqués through a series of "hops" from one mote to the next. Without the need to build a mesh of base stations that must be wired or have a substantial supply of energy, creating information-bearing ad-hoc networks to suit each unique set of circumstances would significantly reduce costs.

"Wiring or 'beefing up' system resources is expensive and is often not feasible for many applications," Ayyorgun said, calling that a "major impetus" for wireless network research. But with nearly all motes dependent on a portable source of power like a battery, it is important that the devices be as energy efficient as possible. "Energy efficiency is a first-class design criterion," he said.

And energy utilization isn't the only consideration. Other performance aspects of concern include the system's connectivity; the delay, or time it takes for data to be transported; the throughput, which measures the amount of data the system can handle at once; and network security, to name a few. Many solutions aimed at advancing wireless sensor networks have managed to improve performance over at most a few metrics at the expense of others. Ayyorgun analogizes the conundrum to a Rubik's cube, the cube-shaped toy in which the aim is to match each of the six sides with one distinct color. Often, gains in one aspect of wireless sensor network performance such as energy efficiency have only been achieved with losses in another area, such as the end-to-end delay.

With Ayyorgun's scheme, however, "all of the colors have started to match," he said. The sensor network was more energy efficient with shorter delay times, and the other performance considerations mentioned earlier have all improved as well.  "The motes communicate randomly, but their random behavior-their genetic code, if you will-has collective intelligence by design," he said. That collective intelligence results in the concurrent performance gains over many aspects, he added.

"We have good colors on all sides, but it's not perfect yet," Ayyorgun said, emphasizing that wireless sensor networks are still in the development stage. Many issues remain to be addressed, just as we are beginning to realize the potential of these "networks of the future."

Ayyorgun acknowledges the support of the Laboratory Directed Research and Development Office at Los Alamos, the Los Alamos Engineering Institute, the Center for Nonlinear Studies, and colleagues, as well as his students.

Los Alamos National Laboratory, a multidisciplinary research institution engaged in strategic science on behalf of national security, is operated by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, a team composed of Bechtel National, the University of California, The Babcock & Wilcox Company, and Washington Group International for the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration.

Los Alamos enhances national security by ensuring the safety and reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile, developing technologies to reduce threats from weapons of mass destruction, and solving problems related to energy, environment, infrastructure, health, and global security concerns.

The latest buzz...

If you are looking for ways to expand the capabilities of your Mote deployment, there's a new sensor you should look into - introducing the new BumbleBee Radar! The BumbleBee is a coherent, pulsed Doppler radar offering rich information at a strikingly low price. Introduced in mid-April by The Samraksh Company, the radar ships ready for use with Crossbow's TelosB Motes.

 

Being a pulsed Doppler radar, the BumbleBee measures radial velocity directly. Because it is coherent, you can determine the sign of the velocity and measure the time structure of relative motion very precisely, even for small motions! Range is not measured directly, but in some contexts you can infer range from motion information.

The BumbleBee produces phase information directly resulting in motion information with a resolution of a fraction of a wavelength (i.e. fractions of a centimeter of displacement) which is an order of magnitude finer than if the radar were non-coherent. This information can be received at a rate of ~300 complex (i.e. real and imaginary pairs) samples per second. This capability opens up opportunities for original research and development in diverse signal processing applications.

BumbleBee's sensitivity is optimized for the normal day-to-day movements of people which makes it a compelling choice for monitoring and classifying human activities in commercial and recreational settings. This device could be used to monitor the usage of urban playgrounds, public parks, employer provided recreational facilities, office conference rooms and waiting areas. Quantitative measurements of loitering, underuse, overuse and unauthorized use would provide an improved basis for setting policy, deciding layouts or evaluating security measures.

Other interesting applications include the classification of unique patterns of movement, such as dancing or fighting in nightclubs, exercising or falling in a retirement home, and even working or sitting around on a construction site. Automated detection of various activities would expedite response in abnormal situations and provide positive feedback in normal situations. Not all applications need to center on people of course! For example BumbleBee can be used to do non-contact wobble detection of rotating machinery in industrial settings, monitor livestock activity, even recognize rodents or snakes in remote parts of a building or an urban infrastructure!

The BumbleBee facilitates information rich applications without compromising on Mote-scale constraints. It uses less than 40 mW or total power, has a range of ~10m, and is form factor compatible with Motes. Most importantly, its technology facilitates a new cost paradigm that is more compatible at a system level with the use of large scale Mote networks. At $100 USD/each, price is its most innovative feature! For more information contact info@samraksh.com.

BumbleBee is patented, but a usage license is made available as part of the purchase price for research usage. The Samraksh Company also promises very reasonable terms for small and mid-scale industrial applications. The radar conforms to FCC regulations for operation within the ISM unlicensed band (at 5.8GHz). Non-research applications may need additional FCC certification.

Ice scream, you scream...

Being a native California driver I rarely encounter icy road conditions unless I'm on my way to Tahoe to go snowboarding or skiing. I remember the day we had snow in the Bay Area and everyone ran outside to experience the phenomenon (although it only lasted on the ground for a few moments before melting away). In many parts of the world icy road conditions prevail and the ability to easily monitor and detect the danger is not easy due to the harsh environment. However, the idea of pavement condition monitoring would save many a spinning car and screaming driver from sliding on the ice into the side of the road.

Pavement maintenance is vital for travel safety. By using wireless sensor networks to monitor pavement temperature and moisture presence, icy road conditions can be detected. It is essential to provide warnings of dangerous traffic conditions in real-time. In a study done at University of Oklahoma, researchers determined to investigate a densely distributed sensor network and classify pavement conditions into certain categories - 1) dry 2) wet and 3) frozen.

This project was deployed with the MICA2 Motes from Crossbow while integrating them with various 3rd party sensing devices using the MDA100 prototyping board. The ability to integrate 'alien' sensors to the Mote platform gave the researchers the flexibility they needed to complete the task at hand. The sensors chosen to provide the data included a thermistor to gather temperature readings, a leaf sensor to detect the conductivity of a wet pavement to detect the existence of free moisture and an infrared sensor to detect ice by emitting a near infrared light that is reflected by the ice and detected by the infrared receiver (water is transparent to the receiver).

An integrated sensor and road button structure housed the 3 sensors as shown in the figure above. The top surface of the sensor road button contained the moisture and infrared sensors with the thermistor at the bottom. Due to the low power consumption of the sensors used, these devices were powered by the MICA2 Mote platform. The Mote platform was placed into a protective watertight aluminum casing with upgraded antenna doubling the Motes transmitting range.

When collecting readings from the sensors, the Mote transformed them into digitized data, sent them to the radio and waited until all data was sent before switching to sleep mode. In detail, the processor received sensor readings from the embedded 10-bit Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC). If the data was taken correctly, the onboard light emitting diodes (or LEDs) lit up to signal the proper functioning of the mote. Analog to digital conversion was performed on the readings, after which the data was integrated into the packet to be transmitted. The default packet format was slightly modified to fit the size and format of the data to be transmitted. The packet was then sent to the radio and transmitted over the network until it reached the base station. The base station was connected to a laptop through a serial port. The data was then collected using a LabVIEW graphical user interface (GUI) developed for this project. Raw data from the serial port was collected, deciphered and displayed by the GUI.

Using the MICA2 Motes to monitor the pavement conditions is a unique application; therefore, the aforementioned features (directly applying time synchronization and embedding a pattern classification algorithm) further distinguish this study from existing research that utilizes Motes in real-world applications. A series of laboratory tests was conducted at the Asphalt Laboratory at the University of Oklahoma using an environmental chamber to study the effect of temperature and moisture on the sensors (and later, the motes). The environmental chamber was used to produce well-controlled temperature and humidity variations. The sensor-road button unit was tested to (1) test the full functionality when all the sensors were combined together, and (2) collect data to aid refinement and further development of the proposed ice detection algorithm proposed in this application. The entire lab test was completed in a four-hour time frame. Note that weather changes in reality could be much slower than this testing rate; thus such a test could be more stringent than a real-world situation.

A series of outdoor tests were conducted as well paying special attention to the packaging and survivability of fragile analog sensors in harsh roadway conditions and how they will be utilized in other applications of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) as well as structural health monitoring. These methods allowed the Mote wireless sensor network to be easily installed and provided a robust solution to environmental factors such as wind and rain. Imagine a day when roads are 'smart', when you are told exactly what conditions to expect before you encounter a patch of ice. It is this concept and future that we envision with the Mote platforms - a smarter safer future that we all can scream for!

Smart Attire - Bringing Technology Into The Closet!

What is smart attire? To some it may be clothes that tell you when they are mismatched, or that figure out how to conform to your body type or inform you that these clothing articles do not belong on your body unless you look like Gisele Bundchen. Smart attire like that would soon get rid of the numerous 'What not to wear' blogs and shows we watch, but unfortunately, that is not what we are talking about today. Smart Attire is the next generation of attire that will embed computing and sensing power in clothes, aiding in the development of novel personal monitoring services such as healthcare for the elderly in the comfort of their own home, safety of people working in dangerous situations such as firefighters, construction workers, etc., personal and medical monitoring for joggers, bicyclists, etc. and even entertainment in offering a personal tourist guide system or for social networking. Smart attire can be useful in many ways to help, benefit and entertain those that use them by personally monitoring their environment and bringing technology into their wardrobe.

The feasibility of embedding clothes with computing devices has come about due to the continued revolution of the decreasing sizes of these devices. This allows the device to be unobtrusive to the wearer. Researchers at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign have developed a Smart Jacket. This piece of clothing is built by weaving MICAz Motes into the lining and padding of a winter jacket. As the size of Motes continue to decrease the goal is to embed these devices in shirts, pants, etc. The jacket prototype developed is capable of monitoring the motion and location information of a person remotely by using accelerometers and a GPS sensor with Crossbow's off-the-shelf sensor hardware such as the MTS310 or MTS420 sensor boards. A typical scenario would be of a person wearing the jacket outdoors while it records the motion and location information in the flash memory of the MICAz Motes. Upon coming into range of the base station, the data collected is uploaded to the PC transparently.

The idea of clothing with sensors and computing devices embedded in them is exciting. The idea is not to create a jacket with gizmos like Inspector Gadget, but to embed sensing into these items. With the development of smart attire that not only integrates technology, but is the technology - it is necessary to develop software to interpret the data collected by the clothing. Hence the development of SATIRE - a software architecture for smart attire. As personal instrumentation and monitoring services that collect and archive the physical activities of a user continue to become more popular, a general software architecture is needed to support the different categories of monitoring services. SATIRE is a personal monitoring service that records the owner's activity and location for subsequent automated uploading and archiving.  It allows users to maintain a private searchable record of their daily activities as measured by motion and location sensors; the goal is to perform this data collection in a manner that is transparent to the user when they come into range of the base access Mote at home. To identify the human activity from accelerometric data is difficult; therefore the SATIRE system uses Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) which is still in development. Future work for this project includes the development of security and privacy policies as well as the identification of more sophisticated activities.

A brief video of the prototype can be seen here:

SATIRE implements remote data logging of daily activities and location information, upload protocols for the raw sensory data collected and the use of sophisticated algorithms to interpret the data and make useful deductions to reconstruct activities from the smart attire. The software architecture developed is flexible and modular for future development of smart attire systems that simplify the introduction of new sensors and new algorithms. To get more information on SATIRE visit the project site here where you can download TinyOS for SATIRE as well as view information on installation and usage of this platform. The future is here - bringing technology into the closet!

Autonomous quadrotor helicopters to the rescue!

What if we could eliminate the need for human intervention in the most dangerous and deadly situations? What if the ability to save a life was not done by endangering the life of another? What if the safety of an area could be determined without the need to send someone in to check the premises? These are a few of the reasons why autonomous vehicles and equipment have become such a fascinating area of development in today's world. The technology available and its integration have brought us closer to the reality of such scenarios occurring not only in a threatening situations across the globe, but in our every day lives whether it be for security and surveillance or search and rescue missions.

Researchers at Stanford University have developed STARMAC (Stanford Testbed of Autonomous Rotorcraft for Multi-Agent Control). This research shows how using the current technology available, students have created a multi-vehicle test bed used to demonstrate new concepts in multi-agent control on a real-world platform. The team created a small and light, low cost design which has provided numerous opportunities for innovative work. STARMAC consists of up to eight quadrotor vehicles. The system uses Crossbow's Stargate platform for position estimation and control. The Stargate platform was pre-configured with a compact flash 802.11b WiFi card and field testing revealed significant improvements in communication robustness between the base station and vehicle compared with earlier designs.

The video below highlights the development work being done and the ultimate goal of this type of research:

 

Whether this technology will be used for cinematography allowing aircraft to be flown in more cutting-edge maneuvers to gain better aerial shots than humanly possible, or creating better topographical maps for aerial mapping by flying closer to the ground than is humanly comfortable, or entering devastated areas to assess damage when humanly inaccessible...the list can go on and on. The bottom line is that this type of research and development continues to pave the path to a future where human life could be more protected in situations where it has been endangered in the past.