The Times has seen a patent application filed by the company for a computer system that links workers to their computers via wireless sensors that measure their metabolism. The system would allow managers to monitor employees’ performance by measuring their heart rate, body temperature, movement, facial expression and blood pressure. Unions said they fear that employees could be dismissed on the basis of a computer’s assessment of their physiological state.

Technology allowing constant monitoring of workers was previously limited to pilots, firefighters and Nasa astronauts. This is believed to be the first time a company has proposed developing such software for mainstream workplaces.

More info here.

Eric Singer, creator of musical robots and maestro of LEMUR, the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots, has unveiled a new wireless sensor-to-MIDI interface. It’s quite a bit pricier than the non-wireless MIDI models at US$495, but the payoff is a complete kit for wireless performance that promises to be resistant to both latency and interference. The receiver can be connected via either USB or MIDI, and the sensor unit has 20 inputs which you can mix and match as up to 10 analog ins and 20 digital ins. Put the sensor/transmitter unit wherever you like, then transmit data wirelessly to the receiver — so the sensors could be strapped to a dancer while a computer or synth receives the data elsewhere.

More info here.

Dust Networks introduced a simpler, less expensive wireless sensor network with a new chip. The system-on-a-chip incorporates all the key elements of a sensor set: Dust’s network protocol, low-power technology, and code.

For more information click here.

Sensinode provides WSN products with seamless enterprise and internet integration. Sensinode products include innovative low-power, ad hoc wireless technology based on IEEE 802.15.4 and Internet Protocol standards.

As an example, they have recently announced the following news: Texas Instruments has adopted Sensinode as their first 6LoWPAN third party. This strengthens TI’s and Sensinode’s position in the field of 6LoWPAN technology.

The NanoStack project has been launched at http://SourceForge.net. The intent of this project is to encourage developers all over the world to share the ideas and interact with each other and make open-source 6LoWPAN a success.

More info about Sensinode can be found here, and NanoStack is available here.

The e-SENSE project finished at the end of 2007 after running successfully for the past 2 years. The project was partially funded by the European IST (Information Society and Technology) 6th Framework Programme and listed an impressive 25 organisations from Europe (Industry and Academia). The project has achieved a number of technical breakthroughs with wider impact on the development of ambient intelligence. Working together, the consortium focussed on researching an end-to-end architecture for Wireless Sensor Networks and integration into Beyond 3rd Generation Systems and Platforms, including necessary radio, protocol and algorithmic solutions as well as interface specifications to realise the architecture.

(more…)