Hewlett Packard and Shell have agreed to develop a wireless sensing system that will be used to acquire high-resolution seismic data for the oil and gas industry.

According to Cliff Saran of ComputerWeekly, the two corporations are in the process of designing wireless accelerometer sensors, similar to the controllers used in the Nintendo Wii, but a “thousand times more accurate.”

The sensors are apparently based on microelectromechanical devices (Mems), which were originally developed for HP print heads.

“These Mems devices have been developed to take electrical signals and convert them to ink droplets,” HP spokesperson Rich Duncombe told Computer Weekly.

More info here.

A one-page paper announcing that wireless technology is for the birds. Or at least the chickens. Michigan State University has plucked a $375,000 federal grant to study the habits of commercial egg-laying hens by using wireless sensors to track “activity profiles.” That’s academic speak for how the hens pass the time when not laying eggs, cackling or playing coy with roosters.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is paying researchers to hook up chickens with a “hen-mountable wireless system” to study how they interact with other birds. The work will help the farmers know how much space hens need and what types of “non-cage housing systems” will provide the “best possible welfare for the animals,” according to MSU.

“Ultimately, the sensors will tell us what behavior a hen is performing. Is she laying an egg? Eating? Or roosting on a perch? Does she fly or walk to move around?” Janice Siegford, a professor of animal science at MSU, said in a statement.

More info here.

Two former founders of MaxStream Inc, the leading embedded wireless networking company acquired by Digi International in 2006, are taking a unique approach to bringing wireless sensor products to market. Brad Walters and Nick Mecham have partnered at Monnit Corporation, to invite engineers desiring to introduce wireless sensors to collaborate with them through a web-based program called “Submit your Sensors.”

This initiative provides deep marketing resources to engineers who have viable low-cost sensor technology ready for introduction to the market.

“During our time at MaxStream, we were approached by many of our wireless customers requesting sensor technology – but that wasn’t our business at the time,” said Brad Walters, Monnit’s CEO.  “While selling our wireless technology, we met with many creators of custom sensors that had never considered expanding their offering beyond their niche market focus. As we launch Monnit, our intent with ‘Submit Your Sensors’ is to do just that – invite engineers who have developed unique sensor technology to allow us to review and potentially sell their wireless sensor technology to a larger audience through us and our growing networks.”

The “Submit Your Sensors” website is a portal for design engineers to present their sensors for review by answering a few questions.  If the wireless sensor technology seems to fit the Monnit plan, they will be contacted to further discuss working together towards an agreement.

The website is accessible here.

Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a tiny solar powered sensor – 1,000 times smaller than comparable commercial counterparts.

The system’s processor, solar cells, and battery are all contained in a frame measuring 2.5 x  3.5 x 1mm.  The system contains the ARM Cortex-M3 processor,  which uses about 2,000 times less power in sleep mode than its most energy-efficient counterpart on the market today.

According to electrical and computer engineering professor David Blaauw, the system can run nearly perpetually if periodically exposed to reasonable lighting conditions, even indoors and the only limiting factor is the life of the battery.

More info here.

Cell phones connect you to the Internet, take and transmit your pictures, help you navigate, take your messages and play movies, music and games – and make phone calls. Soon, they may also serve as nodes in a vast network of chemical weapon sensors.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and NASA are developing cell phones that contain tiny sensors able to detect the presence of harmful chemicals, such as those used in chemical weapon attacks and those released in industrial accidents. When the chemicals are detected, the phones would alert the user and automatically report to government authorities.

The idea, called Cell-All, is a leap ahead from current chemical sensor deployments, which typically involve handful of sensors installed more or less permanently in a relatively few key locations in major cities and around critical installations.

More info here.

The research group on Computer Engineering at ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) has an opening for a post-doctoral fellow and PhD students in the field of sensor networks. These positions are in conjunction with the PermaSense project and two new projects in nano-tera.ch where we focus on real sensor networks deployed for environmental monitoring purposes.

Details are available here.

Body Sensor Networks, wearable electronics and smart tissues are just few of the interesting new technologies which are now facing the market, or that are already commercialized. But, which is the role of the designers willing to approach these new technologies, which are the opportunities and challenges? Generally speaking designers are asked to think about new innovative products and services or novel interaction with objects, therefore the question for a designer is always “what these new technologies will allow me to do? What are them already allowing and to which extent?”

Design with wearable electronics requires competences usually falling outside the usual knowledge area of a designer: not only the body ergonomic, but also biomedical and electronics as well as the psychological aspects impose urgent limits to the design process. These limits must be considered by the designer.
This book is specifically meant for designers and extensively analyzes these problems. Thanks to the contribution of different matter experts the book tries to address the specific areas involved, presenting the biomedical, electronics and psychological states of art, trying to answer to the most important questions. It addresses therefore the essentials elements to understand the wearable systems design. All these information are tied together into a novel specific design methodology, which has been applied, into the second part of the book, to several projects which involved the authors and some students.

More info here.

From the New York Times:

In computing, the vision always precedes the reality by a decade or more. The pattern has held true from the personal computer to the Internet, as it takes time, brainpower and investment to conquer the scientific and economic obstacles to nudging a game-changing technology toward the mainstream.

The same pattern, according to scientists in universities and corporate laboratories, is unfolding in the field of sensor-based computing. Years ago, enthusiasts predicted the coming of “smart dust” — tiny digital sensors, strewn around the globe, gathering all sorts of information and communicating with powerful computer networks to monitor, measure and understand the physical world in new ways. But this intriguing vision seemed plucked from the realm of science fiction.

The complete article is available here.

From IEEE Spectrum:

Soon enough, say some engineers, miniature wireless sensors will be located in spots where it would be inconvenient, to say the least, to change their batteries—inside your body, within the steel and concrete of buildings, in the dangerous innards of chemical plants. But today, even the most robust nodes can be counted on to last only a few years. Ideally, engineers need a sensor that can last forever without external power sources or battery changes. According to research presented in December at the International Electron Devices Meeting, in Baltimore, that dream is within reach.

Two research teams tackled the problem of sensor longevity in two very different ways. Both methods rely on piezoelectric power generation, in which a microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) cantilever converts mechanical motions into electrical power. However, the cantilever’s movements are propelled by very different mechanisms—one by a radioisotope and the other by vibrations harvested from the environment. In a big step forward, both methods fully powered autonomous wireless systems.

The complete article is available here.

The First International Workshop on Networks of Cooperating Objects will be held on April 12th, 2010 – Stockholm, Sweden, collocated with the CPS Week 2010.

During the last decade, the continuous improvement and miniaturization of integrated circuits has led to new types of computing systems. An emerging trend is the collaboration of miniature devices to achieve a common goal. Representative examples include wireless sensor networks, pervasive computing and embedded systems.

Along this trend, the notion of Cooperating Objects collectively refers to embedded computing devices equipped with communication as well as sensing or actuation capabilities, able to cooperate and organize themselves autonomously into networks to achieve a common task. As such, Cooperating Objects envision a single, coherent system formed by a wide range of devices, including those from the areas mentioned above. The complexity germane to the interaction inside and across networks of Cooperating Objects presents a rich set of research questions, and entails a wide range of scientific disciplines, such as networking, software engineering, and control theory.

CONET 2010 will provide a discussion forum for researchers, aimed at fostering synergy and convergence of complementary areas towards the vision of networks of Cooperating Objects. Work-in-progress systems, provocative ideas, and position papers paving the road towards such synergy and convergence are particularly welcome.

Full list of topics of interest available here

Important dates
Submission deadline: Monday, March 1, 2010
Acceptance Notification: Monday, March 22, 2010
Camera Ready: Monday, March 29, 2010