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Gator Innovators Create Smarter Smart Space Technology
Gainesville, FL-
University of Florida innovators have made an exciting breakthrough in the development of programmable, self-sensing smart spaces by creating a plug & play sensor platform which seamlessly bridges the hardware-software divide.
UF computer science and engineering professor Sumi Helal and graduate students Raja Bose and Steven Pickles showcased their "sensor platform" at the 2005 Very Large Data Bases Conference held Aug. 29 through Sept. 3 in Trondheim, Norway. They presented the platform as part of a joint project with researchers from Purdue University.
Helal, Bose and Pickles developed the sensor platform along with UF research scientist Jeffrey King, who is working on his doctorate in computer engineering. Former computer engineering students Steve Van der ploeg and James Russo also contributed to the project, which was funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research and the Department of Education.
This talented group designed and built the device to make it easier for computer programmers to work with pervasive computing spaces, or smart spaces.
"What we've created is a necessary part in the work to develop programmable smart spaces, which read and control things like temperature, motion, light and humidity," King said.
An example of this technology is the Gator Tech Smart House, a 2,500-square-foot smart space programmed to provide home assistance to the elderly and disabled.
Smart spaces like the Gator Tech Smart House which employ a myriad of heterogeneous sensors must be able to provide a uniform software interface to them which will allow application developers to program the space easily. UF's sensor platform is aimed at filling this need. It is superior to competing sensor platforms, like the University of California Berkeley's MOTES, because it allows just about any type of sensors & actuators to be connected to it (unlike the MOTES which comes with a fixed number of sensors already soldered to it) and is essentially a plug & play device which does not require the end user to be aware of the physical characteristics of the sensors or actuators hardware. In addition, it has a stackable architecture allowing users greater flexibility in choosing the communications module they want to use (for example ZigBee instead of Ethernet) or the type & number of sensors/actuators they want to connect.
"Traditional devices are hard-wired, making it difficult to bring in new devices or change the services provided in smart spaces," King said.
The UF sensor platform takes sensors and actuators connected to it and represents them as Java software services which allow programmers to gather information or control devices in the smart space.
Other researchers are already beginning to take advantage of this new invention. The Indiana Center for Database Systems at Purdue University uses a sensor network based on the UF sensor platform in their Nile Phenomena Detection & Tracking System to detect and track environmental phenomena like gas clouds and heat waves. Other universities are lined up to use the sensor platform including the Iowa State University, the Institute for Infocomm Research (IČR) in Singapore, and the National Institute for Telecommunications in France.
"Many universities have been doing sensor network research at the theoretical level," Helal said. "We've provided the necessary piece of the puzzle to enable them to test their theories using real life applications."
"Once you get new technology into universities, you can start getting it into homes," Pickles said. "Then people can use it as a part of everyday life."
To learn more about the UF sensor platform visit: http://www.sensorplatform.org.
To learn more about pervasive smart space technology, visit the UF Pervasive Computing Lab at http://www.harris.cise.ufl.edu/.
Source: Sumi Helal
Writer: Allie Wilson
