The Sixth International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN ‘07) will be hosting an Extreme Sensing competition in Cambridge, Massashusetts, on April 25-27, 2007. Teams will need to build a sensor system, using five sensors or less, to count people walking through a 10ft x 10ft arena.

In Phase 1, the arena will be placed in a high traffic area and all teams will sense normal foot traffic from conference attendees for a duration of 10 minutes. Points will be awarded for correct detections and subtracted for false positives and false negatives. In Phase 2, each team must try to walk through the arena 10 times without being detected by their opponents’ sensors, in order to increase their own score while decreasing the scores of their opponents. Results will be broadcast live during Phase 1, providing each team an opportunity to discern how the other systems work and how they might fail.

Documentation and source code of the competition server is already available for testing. Hardware requirements and questions to be sent to Kamin Whitehouse, who is also in charge of team registrations.  

For more details about the competition, and how to enter, click here. The grand prize will be a Nintendo Wii.

Seville considered as the wireless paradise in Spain, with the higest density of wifi access points (22.000 in 27 sq km tracked, details), is now preparaing to launch a WSN in the Seville port.

The project, called PROFIT, is leadered by engineers Antonio Torralba and Ramón González Carvajal at the University of Seville. Their WSN to be deployed in the port area will use nodes on buoys to sense water conditions and traffic parameters, among others.

The TELEMAQ+ project, on the other hand, is using a similar system to aid  fireman trucks in Andalusia react efficiently in case of forest casualties.

Complete article here (Spanish)