The The Cyber-Physical Systems Week (CPSWEEK 2010), to be held in Stockholm, Sweden, on April 12-16, 2010, brings together five leading conferences in the areas of hybrid control systems, sensor networks, embedded systems, and real-time systems, well as workshops and top-class tutorials in the respective areas:

* HSCC –  13th International Conference on Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control

* ICCPS – 1st International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems

* IPSN – 8th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks

* LCTES – 2nd ACM SIGPLAN/SIGBED Conference on Languages, Compilers, and Tools for Embedded Systems

* RTAS – 16th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium

The CPSWEEK conferences invite submissions for each individual conference. Refer to each conference web site for submission details.

Important dates:

HSCC: October 3, 2009 (past)
ICCPS: December 18, 2009
IPSN: October 23, 2009 (past)
LCTES: October 3, 2009 (past)
RTAS: October 5, 2009 (past)

The Wireless Industrial Sensor Network Testbed for Radio-Harsh Environments (WINTeR) is now available to the research community.

WINTeR is an experimental, web accessible, research facility that supports the development and evaluation of wireless sensor networks for industrial applications. It enables teams to test the performance and integrity of wireless sensor network solutions via a web interface. Once connected, you can run tests with 32 wireless devices, create customized scenarios while maintaining full control of data, attenuation, power supplies, interference, and noise.

Tests can be scheduled to run at a specific time and online graphing of the selected data can be generated in real-time.

More info here

CRC Press just released a new book entitled: RFID and Sensor Networks: Architectures, Protocols, Security, and Integrations. Editor(s): Yan Zhang –Simula Research Laboratory, Lysaker, Norway–,  Laurence T. Yang –St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish NS, Canada–, Jiming Chen –Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China–.

This is the newest release as part of the series: Wireless Networks and Mobile Communications. Current price is ~80.00 USD.

More info available here.

The new wireless sensor platform Waspmote already has an official release day: November 23rd. The Developer Kit will contain 5 Waspmotes + 1 Waspmote Gateway to collect data to the PC. According to Libelium’s philosophy, you will be able to customize the kit choosing the frequency (2.4GHz, 868MHz, 900MHz) and power (low, high) of the 802.15.4/ZigBee radio and some other optional modules such as the GPS and GPRS.

There will be also released three Sensor Boards which have been designed following the community preferences and needs shown in the Sensor Survey.
Preliminary info is available on demand.

Eventual activity of Mount St. Hellens, the most deadly Volcano in the US, could now be monitored with space age monitoring network developed by the SensorWeb Project, a collaboration from Nasa’s AI Group at JPL and WSU SensorWeb Lab

NASA envisions the future use of this technology to explore other planets:  from dust storms or quakes in Mars to seeking life in potential under-ice ocean in Europa, Jupiter’s sixth moon.

Nice video about the Volcano SensorWeb deployment this summer is available here.

Sending alarm messages when some data goes above or below a certain threshold is a common task in a wireless sensor network deployment.Real time and critic systems require quick and reliable methods of delivering the information to the desired responsible for taking action on the problem. For this reason, Libelium has included a quick guide about how to send SMS’s and Emails in real time using the Meshlium platform. The guides show how to parse and integrate the frames received in a database, and how to use step by step the Email system and the GPRS module integrated in the device to send these alarm messages.

The sensor information is delivered to Meshlium using the Waspmote platform which will be in the market before the end of this year. All the code is open source. You can access to these guides in the Meshlium Development section.

Engineers at Scotland’s Institute for System Level Integration (iSLI) have begun work on the development stage of a £3.3 M project to design a wireless sensor system set to become a standard feature of the next generation of commercial aircraft. The project, which will enable the real-time monitoring of critical components during flight and could make a vital contribution to improved air safety, is jointly funded by the UK Technology Board and some of the aerospace industry’s leading companies.

More info here

The Third IEEE International Conference on Sensor Networks, Ubiquitous and Trustworthy Computing (SUTC2010) will be held in Newport Beach, California, USA on June 7-9, 2010.

The availability of small, low-cost and low-power sensors, radios, and micro-controllers has triggered a huge wave of research in networked embedded sensing systems. As a result, different research communities have emerged that work on related aspects, but have slightly different foci. The focus of the sensor network community is on energy-efficient systems and networking solutions. While these aspects are also fundamental for ubiquitous computing, the focus of the latter community is on user interaction. The currently emerging cyber-physical systems community emphasizes the integration of actuation and control. Despite these differences, the realization of the above visions involves a common fundamental challenge: The need for trustworthy computing solutions to deliver secure, private and reliable computing and communication services.

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Low-power Wi-Fi specialist and Intel spinoff company GainSpan Corp today announced a strategic investment and technology development agreement with In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s independent strategic investment firm.

According to GainSpan, its technology provides the lowest power consuming Wi-Fi single chip solution for wireless sensor networks and other embedded applications, allowing devices to run for up to 10 years on a single AA battery.

“GainSpan’s innovative technology helps address critical technology needs of the US Intelligence Community,” said Troy M Pearsall, executive VP of architecture and engineering at In-Q-Tel, in a statement. “The power requirements of Wi-Fi have traditionally limited its application in sensor networks, but GainSpan’s low-power Wi-Fi devices enable new classes of solutions that will provide key technology capabilities to both the government and commercial markets.”

More info here.