5 May 2004
"We are doing for live data what Google does for content," says Intel's Philip Gibbons about the company's "proactive computing" efforts, in this article.

Technologies such as RFID mean that almost any object or space can be assigned unique digital information which can be transmitted wirelessly and accessed remotely. "In the next century, planet Earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit sensations. This skin is already being stitched together. It consists of millions of embedded electronic measuring devices: thermostats, pressure gauges, pollution detectors, cameras, microphones, glucose sensors, EKGs, electroencephalographs. These will probe and monitor cities and endangered species; the atmosphere; our ships, highways and fleets of trucks; our conversations; our bodies--even our dreams." (Neil Gross, in this article.)

"If you roll forward, 99 percent of the Internet is going to billions of these little devices, streaming information." David Cullerof U.C. Berkeley (see below), quoted here. This can be seen as part of a continuing trend: "Above and across the natural lifeworld -- railways, roads, pipelines, power grids, telephone networks, microwave relays, satellite links, etc. -- development has erected a vast circulatory system, a Motherboard Earth whose purpose is the maximization of our inputs and outputs and the extraction of our surpluses....Like an ironic cybernetic realization of the Hegelian 'Weltgeist,' it seems as if some immense Artificial Intelligence program was struggling into consciousness, writing itself ever deeper into opaque regions of its planetary host." (Arike, 2001)

Michahelles and Schiele (2003) link sensor input with application design by identifying various general dimensions of sensors which help establish a context for action: identification, location (of the user and/or sensor, object use, bio signs/emotion, activity, and interaction among humans. Identification refers to the user, for personalization; and/or of the sensor. For users, they distinguish between merely differentiating one person from another and explicit identification. Location can be explicit coordinates (2D or 3D), or semantic (for example, the person is to the left). Activity can further encompass what the user is doing, or refer to simple spatial movement. Research into emotion, as the authors acknowledge, is still in its infancy (see below) but presently, sensors can measure attributes such as heart rate, galvanic skin response, respiration, and brainwave patterns.

Some particular projects of note: U.C. Berkeley's Smart Dust; and M.I.T.'s Oxygen. Power and ruggedness are problems to be addressed, and Mark Tilden at Sandia has an interesting approach in his solar powered robots based on biology, which you can read about here.

Related Pages
Input & Interaction contains links to sensor manufacturers.