Research Programs
Sensor Networks and Ambient Intelligence
In recent years, sensor networks have attracted a great deal of interest from the research community and the industry. There is also growing interest in the emerging related field of ambient intelligence, which promises a future world where computing, communications and sensing will be ubiquitously and unobtrusively embedded in our living environment.
Although some interesting applications of sensor networks and ambient intelligence already exist, there is no "killer application" yet. Today, most sensor networks are deployed on an adhoc basis and at a small scale. It is a daunting challenge to scale sensor networks to large deployments. Sensor networks often have proprietary vendor-specific designs and it is difficult to interconnect them with existing IT infrastructure such as the Internet. Thus, sensor networks operate in isolated information silos and sensor data cannot be easily shared.
A key ingredient for the widespread adoption of sensor networks and ambient intelligence is the cyber-sensor infrastructure for the efficient collection, management, processing, visualization, archival, and searching of vast amounts of complex and diverse data from distributed and heterogeneous sensors and other information sources. The main goal of this program is to design and develop such an infrastructure.
There are three
main thrusts in this program. First, novel platform technologies
such as advanced sensor nodes, sensor network and sensor grid middleware,
and novel programming tools will be developed. Second, various components
of the cyber-sensor infrastructure such as sensor integration,
data management and visualization, multi-modal user interface, and security,
will be designed. Finally, through several use-inspired application
research projects, technologies and applications
for security, environmental monitoring, urban living, healthcare, transportation
, education, entertainment and tourism will be deployed.
Research projects:
- The National Weather Study Project
- SensorMap for the National Weather Study Project
- Middleware design for wireless sensor networks of mulitisensor devices
- Energy efficient resource management for wireless sensor networks
- Location sensing for wireless sensor network
Research demos: