Ambient Informatics

Wed, 26 Apr 2006 22:33:31 GMT

Test again, and again...

Sun, 10 Jul 2005 18:31:49 GMT

Sensor Web Simulation Investigates Technique to Improve Prediction of Pollution Across the Globe
NASA technologists are exploring an innovative technology called the “sensor web.” This interconnected “web of sensors” coordinates observations by spacecraft, airborne instruments and ground-based data-collecting stations. Instead of operating independently, these sensors collect data as a collaborative group, sharing information about an event as it unfolds over time.
[NASA Goddard Space Flight Center]

Tue, 05 Jul 2005 01:47:10 GMT

NOTE: Ambient Informatics was a sponsor of this research [permalink]

End Users Know What They Want from RFID Middleware

The field of RFID middleware is still young. Technology vendors are feeling their way around and some still do not have a clear idea of what RFID middleware should do.

But end users know what they want.

Venture Development Corporation (VDC) recently put together a report about RFID middleware. Frontline Solutions has the story:

The market for RFID software is expected to have the fastest compound annual growth rate of any other RFID segment through 2008, according to VDC's research. The overall RFID market reached $1.7 billion in 2004, and is expected to grow 36% annually through 2008, reaching $5.9 billion. While the hardware segment will have an average growth rate of 27.6%, and services will grow at a 47.8% clip, software will have a CAGR of 59.8%.

According to VDC, five middleware functions dominated the end user want lists:

Provide a consistent interface for the RFID interrogator infrastructure. Standard interfaces--human, machine, network, application--do not exist across various RFID interrogator solutions.
Data filtering and transport. Similar to the lack of standard interfaces, users cite the varied methods used to filter, compile, and route RFID data traffic as a key challenge during the implementation and integration process. Users are looking to RFID middleware to account for these differences, and resolve them in a consistent manner.
Manage the RFID reader/interrogator infrastructure. Key functions cited by users and evaluators included local and remote monitoring, upgradeable software/configuration, and remote power on/off.
Support for multiple host platforms requesting RFID data. The most often cited platform challenges included: warehouse management systems (WMS), order entry/ order management systems (OMS), transportation management systems (TMS), logistics management systems (LMS), supply chain management systems (SCM), and data warehouses.
Support for legacy systems.

"Right now, core products are meeting the basic needs of data aggregation and data filtering and routing," Liard said. "As users better understand the business value of RFID, they'll be calling for more features and functionality.

"Each application is unique," he continued. "It's tough to develop off-the-shelf software when everyone is just figuring this stuff out. People are still feeling their way around."

[The RFID Weblog]

Tue, 05 Jul 2005 01:39:59 GMT

Keeping an Eye on Domestic Appliances
Innovators have long sought areas in the home that technology could improve. With advances in microprocessors and connectivity, companies such as Control4 are making those visions a reality. Control4 and the South Korean telecom outfit SK Telecom have been using ZigBee technology to facilitate wireless control of automated household items, such as a television or an iron. Ember CEO Jeff Gramer says lower prices and ZigBee's "mesh radio" system's flexibility, which automatically reconfigures the network when a device is added or removed, has boosted its popularity. Gramer says, "The reason that it is really starting to take off in the home is that the cost of a ZigBee solution is under $5." However, competition has come from abroad, as the Danish company Zensys has developed a rival technology called Z-Wave, which the company offers for roughly half of ZigBee's price. Each company plans to ship 1 million units this year. Aside from internal competition in the market, promoters of household automation will have to demonstrate the relevance of their technology. Analysts have identified security, health care, and energy conservation as the three most likely avenues to mainstream wireless household automation. Non-invasive monitoring of the elderly and infirmed could enable them to live independently for longer, and alerts of wasted energy would clearly save consumers money on their utility bills. Despite lingering concerns over the ease with which the automated household could be managed and whether existing nodes are strong enough for certain complex security applications, developers are aiming for the sky. "If every household did have 100 or so of these devices, then you get up to the billions very quickly," says Gartner's Nick Jones.
[ACM TechNews]

Links:
Zensys Z-Wave
Control4
ZigBee Alliance

Wed, 29 Jun 2005 17:38:16 GMT

Warp Speed for Wireless Networks
As new technologies for wireless networks race to speeds significantly faster than Wi-Fi, a gold-rush mentality has created a fiercely competitive market that, having yet to agree on even the most basic standards for the future, will provide users with a dizzying array of options. While technologies such as Intel's new WiMax seeks to overtake Wi-Fi, the battle is also on for the future of short-distance connectivity, as at least six alternatives to Bluetooth are in the works. However, next year's debut of 802.11n is poised to increase current Wi-Fi speeds tenfold, so supplanting its market share will not be easy. "Because Wi-Fi was so popular, it takes away a lot of the demand for other technologies," says analyst Allen Nogee, citing its user-friendly simplicity. MIMO, a radio technology popular among cellular networks, is one contender in the battle to overtake Wi-Fi. MIMO promises high-quality, cell network video, and may be an alternative to Ethernet connections, said Airgo CEO and MIMO inventor Greg Raleigh. Still, WiMax's 30-mile network capacity may give it an edge in sparsely populated settings. In the short range market, ZigBee technology, supported by Freescale and Analog Devices, may win out as it supports a wide spectrum of household applications, such as remotely transmitting readings from a utility meter and powering a home theater system. The one hope for cooperation in the market may be efforts such as Intel and Freescale's initiative to fuse multiple technologies onto a single chip. Still, companies such as Dell, among others, remain cautious, and are opting to wait to see which technologies drop off before they choose the one to endorse.
[ACM TechNews]

Tue, 07 Jun 2005 14:43:47 GMT

Making SMART Homes Smarter
Juan Carlos Augusto with the University of Ulster's School of Computing and Mathematics seeks to further "smart homes" technology through the application of ambient intelligence. He says houses equipped with sensors can detect movement as well as determine its cause, and the information gathered by the technology can be analyzed at a remote location and used to help the house's occupants. For example, monitoring medical issues is essential to people who live by themselves; the technology could spot when elderly residents are in trouble and alert the proper people or authorities, as well as diagnose health problems before they get too serious. In addition, the technology could bolster building security by detecting mysterious movements. Augusto, an artificial intelligence expert, is working on software that can analyze the numerous goings-in picked up by sensors at a remote site. He says, "Individual sensors need to be complemented with software that can have a more holistic view of a given environment at any time as to anticipate potential risks or needs and act accordingly." Augusto says smart homes are "technologically and commercially viable" today, and will become even more advanced as new sensors and more complex designs are developed.
[ACM TechNews]

Thu, 26 May 2005 01:16:30 GMT

Sensacell : Modular Sensor Surface
The SENSACELL system is a new human interface technology for various interior and exterior applications and is scalable from a single module to 1000's of square feet. The modular sensor detects objects within 6" through materials such as glass, plastics, wood, tile, etc. The system's network can also interface with a computer...
[Future Feeder]

Thu, 26 May 2005 01:15:20 GMT

Building Large-Scale ZigBee Systems With Web Services
Large-scale ZigBee systems can be enabled for network discovery, extraction, commissioning, configuration, management, security, event/rule logic, and data management applications via Web service "brokers," write Tendril Networks CEO Tim Enwall and Ember's Venkat Bahl. Application developers could tap a common suite of foundational software design and run-time tools and services offered through standards-based Web services. Service brokers can function as structured mechanisms to regulate communications, such as routing requests along node-to-application, node-to-node, and application-to-node pathways. With such software services, developers can immediately concentrate on application-specific material, the rules governing the physical environment, the data aggregation and synthesis necessary for effective decision making, and the human and computer communications to be relayed to facilitate the appropriate user outcomes. Moreover, if the developer is familiar with the ways in which the broker's services operate, then the developer only has to know what a ZigBee system is capable of. Knowing the various ins and outs of MEMS sensors, ZigBee mesh networking routing algorithms, wireless network reliability, node operating systems, internode networking stacks, protocols, and how they are integrated into the application is therefore unnecessary. A service broker must provide a logical abstraction layer that virtually maps out the network and its capabilities for the developer; a set of core services that allow the existing infrastructure and new network entries to be discovered, and that shield the network from the unsanctioned introduction of network components; a rules engine to enable an application's algorithms and hierarchical processing across a spectrum of networks; understandable, manageable, and optimized data flow as well as universal availability of preprocessed data throughout the enterprise; and simulation capability.
[ACM TechNews]

Thu, 26 May 2005 01:12:17 GMT

Body Media : You will get sick. . . now..
Eric Teller's company, Body Media has tracked 132 years of human activity, including 44,533 minutes of jogging and 6,250 minutes of Ping-Pong through it's armband monitor. The company has sold 7,500 armband monitors which wirelessly record physiological data to be analyzed by 1,300 algorithms that figure out what that body is doing. Within [...]
[Future Feeder]

Tue, 24 May 2005 00:52:11 GMT

Nifty-sounding book/blog from IBM...Inescapable Data. Hmmm!

Cooking-up Start-ups. Inescapable Data (ID) isn't a cookbook for start-ups, but you could read it to find the ingredients for a host of new businesses. Start with the simple premise of Inescapable Data; that data sources can (and will) be converged...
[Inescapable Data]

Thu, 12 May 2005 18:38:40 GMT

A Web of Sensors, Taking Earth's Pulse
Ecologists are planning to set up more than $1 billion worth of sensor web technology to study diverse environments with an eye toward saving the planet. Dr. Deborah Estrin with UCLA's Center for Embedded Network Sensing says the goal of such deployments is to create the ecological equivalent of MRI or CAT scans, while Dr. Alexandra Isern with the National Science Foundation (NSF) says sensor web technology is helping scientists understand "how different processes in the environment operate at different frequencies." Factors driving the sensor web wave include the support of institutions such as the NSF and the Defense Department, which have respectively financed planning and research into new sensor network deployments and the miniaturization of electronics to yield technologies such as motes and smart dust. Over 100 wireless motes, robots, computers, and cameras are linked into a network in California's wooded James Reserve to measure temperature, humidity, rainfall, soil moisture, and light levels, as well as track wildlife, plant growth, nesting activity, and the production of carbon dioxide in the soil. Other sensor web projects include RiverNet, which will use floating robots, wireless sensors, and distributed computers to track and improve the water quality of the Hudson River; EarthScope, an effort to study North America's continental formation and evolution to gain better insight into fault systems, earthquakes, mineral deposits, and volcanic activity; and Neptune, which involves the deployment of almost 2,000 miles of sensor, camera, and robot-equipped cables under the Pacific to study the ocean environment. Meanwhile, the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) initiative's goal is to chart the spread of invasive species and predict shifts in the biosphere to augment land use and restoration strategies.
[ACM TechNews]

Thu, 12 May 2005 18:37:21 GMT

A Vision of Terror
Intelligence officers stand to benefit from new visualization tools that enable them to generate unique representations of digital communications that could help map out terrorist activity. The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) has developed Starlight 3.0, a new generation of software that graphically displays the relationships and interactions between documents that contain text, images, video, and audio, for the Homeland Security Department. Starlight is a redesign of earlier software that permits interactive analysis of larger datasets, the jettisoning of irrelevant content, and the addition of new data streams as they come in, according to PNNL chief scientist John Risch. The software enables a fourfold increase in the volume of documents that can be analyzed simultaneously, and allows the concurrent opening of multiple visualizations, which Risch says lets users see the time as well as the location of an activity's occurrence. Another PNNL effort involves the continual augmentation of IN-SPIRE software for deriving meaning from large datasets and allowing users to explore the likelihood of alternative hypotheses, says National Visualization and Analytics Center (NVAC) director Jim Thomas, who says the software can search documents in multiple languages at the same time and permits the "discovery of the unexpected." Both Starlight and IN-SPIRE generate visualizations that graphically depict relationships between content by displaying them in multiple formats. Other organizations working on analytical software for the federal government include Intelligenxia, whose IxReveal software can track online message threads and provide answers to unasked queries, says Intelligenxia CTO Ren Mohan.
[ACM TechNews]

Wed, 11 May 2005 13:49:51 GMT

Sensing the World
Jamais Cascio: One of the subjects that's close to our hearts here at WorldChanging is the use of sensor technology to understand the environment. Whether urban sensors...
[WorldChanging: Another World Is Here]

Sun, 08 May 2005 21:48:36 GMT

Sensor Web - Bing!

Fri, 06 May 2005 16:38:38 GMT

RFID and WiFi, What a Combo.

Cisco has introduced a new device that combines RFID and WiFi. Its purpose? To track the location of assets. According to EE Times as reprinted over at InformationWeek:

Cisco is initially targeting health-care networks to use the locator system to monitor hospital and clinic equipment. Ann Sun, senior manager of wireless and mobility solutions, said she anticipates growing interest from manufacturers along with public-safety applications and similar markets where asset tracking is important.

The system can be used in conjunction with voice-over-IP infrastructure, but works best when VoIP has been extended to a voice-over-Wi-Fi environment.

One location system is used for each central enterprise site where aggregation and network policy enforcement is required. Wi-Fi access points gather received signal strength indicators (RSSI) from 802.11 devices and tags, and Cisco Lightweight Access Point Protocol (LWAPP) controllers serve to aggregate RSSI information."

Privacy advocates already object to Cisco's new offering. Their objection is that it could be used to track people.

Of course, if an employer wants to track employees, it doesn't need to spring the $15K for Cisco's box. The employer probably has enough technology out there today to get a pretty good handle on what employees are doing.

[The RFID Weblog]

Thu, 05 May 2005 17:10:51 GMT

An unusual title for an otherwise very good article on next generation computing systems architecture...from the DB perspective.

A Call to Arms
Long anticipated, the arrival of radically restructured database architectures is now finally at hand.

"In a related development, people building sensor networks have discovered that if you view each sensor as a row in a table (where the sensor values make up the fields in that row), it becomes quite easy to write programs to query the sensors. What's more, current distributed query technology, when augmented by a few new algorithms, proves to be quite capable of supporting highly efficient programs that minimize bandwidth usage and are quite easy to code and debug. Evidence of this comes in the form of the tiny database systems that are beginning to appear in smart dust-a development that's sure to shock and awe anyone who has ever fooled around with databases.

Self-managing and always-up. Indeed, if every file system, every disk, every phone, every TV, every camera, and every piece of smart dust is to have a database inside, then those database systems will need to be self-managing, self-organizing, and self-healing."

[ACM Queue]

Tue, 03 May 2005 18:09:42 GMT

The Time Traveler Convention
May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)
(event starts at 8:00pm)
East Campus Courtyard, MIT
42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W
(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)

What is it?
Technically, you would only need one time traveler convention. Time travelers from all eras could meet at a specific place at a specific time, and they could make as many repeat visits as they wanted. We are hosting the first and only Time Traveler Convention at MIT in one week, and WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Tue, 03 May 2005 01:45:39 GMT

Sensor Data Are Spatial Data
Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) President Mark Reichardt writes that all sensor data constitute spatial data because every sensor has a physical location, and this reasoning is a core tenet of OGC's Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) effort. SWE is a key element of the OWS-3 Interoperability Initiative for advancing OpenGIS Specifications through "hands-on" prototyping and testing. SWE's objective is to facilitate interoperable access to distributed, dissimilar sensors and sensor networks so that applications to discover, access, and combine sensor data from a wide variety of technologies and databases can be implemented. Reichardt says the publication of standardized descriptions of sensor capabilities, location, interfaces, and observations can be effected through XML-based text schemas, which Web brokers, clients, and servers can employ to facilitate automated Web-based discovery of sensors' presence as well as the evaluation of their properties. The XML schema provides sensor control interface information that enables communication with the sensor system, and offers a way to automatically produce far-reaching standard-schema metadata for sensor-generated data, allowing data in distributed archives to be discovered and interpreted. Oak Ridge National Laboratory's SensorNet requirements and the needs of other OGC members are helping drive the SWE specs' maturation, as well as reconcile OGC's Sensor Model Language with the IEEE 1451 "plug-n-play" sensor standard and mature the Sensor Alert Service via employment of the OASIS Common Alert Protocol. Reichardt says these examples illustrate how closer relationships between OGC and other standards bodies are helping the consortium reach its goals.
[ACM TechNews]

Tue, 03 May 2005 01:13:45 GMT

Footnote to previous post: Related to my comments about John Thackera - another visionary, the late Ken Sharma (d.1999), used to always ask the group at the beginning of a meeting, "What is the purpose of this meeting?", "Are the right people in the room?" and finally "How do we know when we are done?".

I always liked that last one...

"How do we know when we are done?"

Tue, 03 May 2005 00:11:03 GMT

IN THE BUBBLE: DESIGNING IN A COMPLEX WORLD

"We're filling up the world with technology and devices, but we've lost sight of an important question: What is this stuff for? What value does it add to our lives? So asks author John Thackara in his new book, In the Bubble: Designing for a Complex World. These are tough questions for the pushers of technology to answer. Our economic system is centered on technology, so it would be no small matter if "tech" ceased to be an end-in-itself in our daily lives. Technology is not going to go away, but the time to discuss the ends it will serve is before we deploy it, not after. We need to ask what purpose will be served by the broadband communications, smart materials, wearable computing, and connected appliances that we're unleashing upon the world. We need to ask what impact all this stuff will have on our daily lives. Who will look after it, and how? In the Bubble is about a world based less on stuff, and more on people. Thackara describes a transformation that is taking place now -- not in a remote science fiction future; it's not about, as he puts it, "the schlock of the new" but about radical innovation already emerging in daily life. We are regaining respect for what people can do that technology can't. In the Bubble describes services designed to help people carry out daily activities in new ways. Many of these services involve technology -- ranging from body implants to wide-bodied jets. But objects and systems play a supporting role in a people-centered world. The design focus is on services, not things. And new principles -- above all, lightness -- inform the way these services are designed and used. At the heart of In the Bubble is a belief, informed by a wealth of real-world examples, that ethics and responsibility can inform design decisions without impeding social and technical innovation."

Right on. I attended the Doors of Perception conference November 14,15,16 of 2002 entitled"Flow" and have always valued Mr. Thackera's views and appreciated his approaches. He has been throwing out hints for years regarding the "purpose" - getting the right people in the room - and prompting them to look at design issues objectively around context:people and not just through the lenses of thier specific discipline or industry perspective. Now its his turn to talk. Listen-up.

Get it from Amazon, or your favorite bookseller.

Tue, 26 Apr 2005 03:38:29 GMT

Car Computers Track Traffic
A federally funded "smart highway" project headed by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Center for Infrastructure and Transportation Studies seeks to address gridlock by tracking traffic via a wireless network of cars equipped with global positioning system (GPS) devices. Motorists participating in a pilot project receive feedback from in-vehicle computers on a continuous basis. Each vehicle transmits drive-time data to a server once a minute; the server processes this information and extracts a picture of traffic around a radius of 40 miles, while speed is computed by monitoring progress between virtual checkpoints. Updates are relayed by the in-car computers, which give the driver directions and warnings via a synthesized voice. Rensselaer Center research director Al Wallace believes the system could be especially beneficial for mid- and small-sized cities bedeviled by rush-hour traffic, noting that its deployment would be less costly than setting up pole-mounted cameras or road sensors. The collection of data from road cameras, "black box" computer chips, and electronic toll tags has provoked fears of exploitation from privacy proponents. Rensselaer Center director George List says deactivating the GPS units are a simple way to avoid monitoring. Intelligent Transportation Society President Neil Schuster says transportation officials and private companies are investigating GPS and other technologies for upgrading traffic systems, while the auto industry is considering a wireless network for moving cars that could be hosted on federally dedicated spectrum.
[ACM TechNews]

Sat, 23 Apr 2005 23:30:14 GMT

Overtly Smart Buildings

"Such schemes can be complex, however. They involve computer simulations tied into building control systems and updated by sensor feedback and performance data. Sensors keep tabs on virtually anything that can be monitored, whether mechanically, magnetically, electromagnetically, thermally, optically, chemically, biologically, or acoustically. And the conglomeration of sensors packed into intelligent buildings is increasingly accessed via wireless networks."

[Technology Research News]

Wed, 20 Apr 2005 13:13:45 GMT

This makes sense. More convergence is a good thing.
Interesting they use the word "convergence" - but it makes sense. Thats OK. The "Security Convergence" they evangelize is still a subset of what I have referred to previously as a "new convergence". The previous "convergence" has its origins in describing the pre-internet phenomena of digitization and "new media" (and we are already converged!). But it still works...

CSO Executive Editor Derek Slater introduces a special issue on convergence.

Taking Leadership to a New Level - An in-depth look at holistic security management and question whether the hurdles — such as cultural rifts, differing skill sets and terminology barriers - can, and should, be overcome.

The Convergence Momentum Theory - Why Resistance Is Futile. Underlying the growth of holistic security management are five other markers of convergence.

The Defining Moment - Achieving convergence has less to do with who reports to whom and more to do with accountability, leadership and yes — security.

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 13:27:07 GMT

Almost crushed by it's own hype, and desperation for a new new "must have" technology - any commercial "RFID Conference" or discussion is - by default - too narrowly focused.

Can't see the forest...Hammer/Nail syndrome...whatever the metaphor...RFID is simply a component (COTS) of a greater systems design approach - which does have a value proposition. As a stand-alone technology - RFID solves nothing.

Great brief from AMR:

It's like The RFID World Is Stuck in Neutral--Time for Someone To Put It in Drive
AMR Research attended the recent RFID Journal LIVE conference in Chicago and listened to the same presentations and messages again. The content is getting stale, and the market is in jeopardy of collapsing under its own weight if people don't start talking about the value of using RFID.
[AMR Research]

"...the percentage of end users in the audience was very small. The agenda featured the same cast of presenters that are touring the RFID circuit..."

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 02:46:00 GMT

DICE : Distributed Interactive Command Element
This is an inevitable application of Ambient Informatics concepts. For better or worse - perhaps what we learn from this can will advance our capabilities and lead eventually to positive applications as demanded for peacetime applications in "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush.

DARPA has awarded Lockheed Martin with $1.4MM (a drop in the bucket as the article mentions) to "build a commander’s interface to make sense of data in a networked war zone".
[Red Herring]