In close collaboration with Oxford University and the Freie Universitat Berlin, Microsoft has developed an innovative system that can autonomously monitor animals and their habitats. Using a combination of wireless sensor networks and innovative software they are able to intelligently gather data from remote locations, relaying it back for local storage and processing and allow remote reconfiguration of the network by research scientists.

They are currently using this system on Skomer Island to monitor the behaviour of the Manx Shearwater.

More info here.

Axcess International Inc., a leading provider of wireless business-activity monitoring solutions, announced the “industry’s first Smart Wireless Sticker.” It provides automatic item identification, locating, tracking, protecting, data logging, and condition sensing for items up to 1000 ft. away, at a cost of less than $10 per sticker. The “wireless computer on a sticker” combines traditional bar codes, Electronic Product Code (EPC) RFID, long-range RFID tracking, and wireless sensing in a small electronic label easily adhered to most any object. It is designed to enhance data management in product manufacturing, product automatic identification in shipping, automatic inventory and protection of enterprise assets, and visibility into the condition of perishables and pharmaceuticals throughout the shipping process.

More info here.

CALL FOR PAPERS
===============
The PhD-NOW seminar aims to provide a friendly and supportive atmosphere where PhD students can present their ongoing research, get constructive feedback and learn what problems are being tackled by the fellow students. More importantly, it also provides a venue for all students to “network” with each other, as well as with the established researchers, obtain valuable guidance and tips, and participate in a forum designed specifically to benefit graduate students. We particularly encourage PhD students from the EU convergence regions and Western Balkan countries to take part in the workshop. The seminar is supported by the PROSENSE, FP7 Support Action project .

Applicants should be far enough into their PhD to have a concrete proposal, and have initially outlined the most important issues and proposed research methodology. Selected abstracts will appear in the AdHOC-NOW proceedings. Comprehensive surveys of the state-of-the-art in relevant technologies are also encouraged.

(more…)

MobiSys 2008 announces “A PhD Forum on Mobile Systems Applications and Services” (see Call for Contributions).  The PhD Forum will be organized as a poster session, which will be viewed by all the attendees, for PhD students to present and discuss their dissertation research with people in the field of mobile systems applications and services. This forum will allow PhD students to get feedback on their research in a friendly and supporting environment from their PhD peers, faculty, and industry representatives.  Students planning to graduate within 1-2 years or who will have completed their dissertation during the 2007-2008 academic year are eligible to join.

This is the first PhD forum led by PhD students for PhD students.
More info here

From Crossbow’s blog:

Embedded programming has historically involved pulling out your C compile, and writing detailed code that needs to carefully manage limited memory resources, hardware interrupts, and low-level bus interfaces. The benefits brought by newer high-level languages such as Java and C# have lagged entry into this space by about 5-10 years. The delay can be attributed to limits to memory and processing speeds within the space due to aggressive cost requirements, and a lack of tools and software support for embedded platforms compared to PC/server platforms. More recently, the J2ME and Windows CE platforms have made Java and C# respectively available to smart phone and PDA application developers. But both of these environments continue to limit the amount of control the developer has over low-level interrupts and hardware resources. The Microsoft .NET Micro environment that powers the Crossbow Imote2 .Builder kit allows programming an embedded device with C#, while providing native control over hardware resources such as the I2C, SPI, and UART buses. Programming a native IEEE 802.15.4 radio driver for example is possible in this environment, and the full source code for such an implementation is provided.

More here.

The 3rd European Conference on Smart Sensing and Context (EuroSSC) will be held on October 29-31, 2008 in Zurich, Switzerland.
This annual conference explores techniques, algorithms, architectures, protocols, and user aspects, underlying context-aware smart surroundings, and cooperating intelligent objects, and their applications to provide context-aware smart assistance.

EuroSSC was held before in Enschede (NL) and Kendal (UK). Building on the success of the last years, EuroSSC 2008 will include a highly selective single-track program for technical papers, accompanied by posters, demonstrations, invited speakers, and an industrial panel.

Submissions of original and unpublished work are welcome covering all areas related to smart surroundings, context-awareness and networked embedded sensor and actuator systems, in one or more of the following categories: technical papers, posters, and demonstrations. The topics include (but are not limited to):

* Distributed smart sensing and context recognition
* Context processing
* Context-aware actuators, interaction methods, and human aspects
* Applications, deployment, test beds and case studies
More info here

Frankfurt, Germany – April 7, 2008 – MeshNetics, a leading provider of ZigBee modules and embedded software for OEMs and system integrators, and BFM AB, an innovative energy management company, announced today at the Light and Building exhibition in Frankfurt, Germany, the successful deployment of the ZigBee-based energy management system called Link2Web. The wireless system deployed at an industrial facility in Sweden reduced the facilitys energy costs by 37% over the course of one year.

The entire Link2Web system was installed in an industrial building with a total heated area of 3,600 square meters holding one oil-fired boiler and nine air handling units with air heaters and recycling air control.
More information can be found here.

From Roger Meike’s Blog

So we launched our SPOT controlled weather balloon, EDGAR1, yesterday. It was really a lot of fun. Here is my account of the day.

This project was started about two weeks ago by our extraordinary intern, Tennessee Carmel-Veilleux. Working in the evening and on weekends he and other Sun Labs researchers designed and executed a plan to put a Sun SPOT in near space. A weather balloon would carry aloft a payload including radios, GPSs, various sensors and of course a Sun SPOT for control. It should rise into the air some 10 - 15 miles and then gently parachute to safety where we would gather up our gadgets and analyze the data. Sounds like fun!

More here.

Devices working their way from industry into innovations in homes.

The device doesn’t look like much – a gray plastic casing that holds a temperature sensor, a low-power radio and a couple of AA batteries. Only the Microsoft Research logo suggests there’s anything revolutionary about it.

But its creator says that pioneers have already used similar gizmos to transform the world. Over the next few years, he predicts, dozens of these bland boxes will change the way you live.

“These boxes will do more for you than your car,” said Feng Zhao, a Microsoft Corp. researcher who has devoted much of his life to a technology that most people haven’t even heard of – yet.
More info here

The risk of having an accident in a car could soon be drastically cut thanks to a new approach to wireless networks.
Embedded sensor networks are designed to replace existing networks that can only share information that has already been captured and stored.

Sensor networks instead take information from several individual nodes - potentially thousands of them in different locations - in real time, and can act on it accordingly.This means that during a journey, vehicles could monitor each other’s speed and position - and therefore dramatically cut the risk of accidents.

More information here