People | Publications

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Projects | Funding

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Looking forward 10-20 years we envision Internet scale sensing where the majority of the traffic on the network is sensor data and the majority of the applications used every day by people integrate sensing, fusion, and actuation in some form or another. MetroSense is a new wireless sensor edge network for this future Internet based on the concept of "people-centric sensing" at a large scale (e.g., campus, town, metropolis).

When we think of existing sensor networks, people are out-of-the-loop they simply interact at the periphery of the network with physically embedded static sensor webs to realize small scale application-specific sensing applications, such as environmental and industrial monitoring. With MetroSense, not only are people in-the-loop but they are central to the sensing experience and represent the key architectural component of the new sensor edge. MetroSense transforms sensing from mostly static and physically embedded to mostly mobile and people-centric. Sensing is no longer application specific but provides an open general-purpose programming environment capable of the execution of multiple distributed sensing applications in parallel.

Our current projects address various aspects of the people-centric sensing paradigm. With CenceMe, we are targeting a large-scale deployment of sensor-equipped mobile phones) to facilitate the sharing of "presence" information among friends. We are exploring the concept of opportunistic tasking, sensing, and fusion, including the interaction mobile sensors with embedded static sensor webs, with Quintet and MetroTrack. Using Quintet, mobile phones can automatically share information with each other to increase the fidelity of sensed data and to enable new collaborative sensing applications. MetroTrack harnesses uncontrolled mobile sensors to track mobile sensed events, such as noise. In the AnonySense project, we are working to ensure the security, trust, and privacy of people-centric data. We investigate how personal recreation can benefit from sensing in the BikeNet and SkiScape projects, and are looking at novel ways to blend the virtual world and the sensed physical world. Underlying all of these inititiatives are the challenges that arise with the use of mobile wireless communications. Characterizing and understanding the implications of these challenges is critical to the success of people-centric sensing effort.

MetroSense presents a number of new and interesting ideas that ultimately might help shape sensing as it shifts from its small-scale application-specific mutli-hop origins to a new sensor edge for Internet - where sensing is no longer a niche application but a part of the mainstream of people's every day lives.