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Networking for networkers
ENG launches consortium to develop sensor networks
By Tim Stoddard
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Yannis Paschalidis, an ENG associate professor of manufacturing engineering (right), and Linda Grosser, associate director of the ENG Center for Information and Systems Engineering, have launched a new consortium for businesses and academics pursuing sensor network technology. Photo by Vernon Doucette |
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Students and faculty in Yannis Paschalidis’ ENG laboratory readily swap ideas about designing sensor networks, but until recently, the cross-pollination has been strictly intramural. Paschalidis, an ENG associate professor of manufacturing engineering, says there has been an invisible barrier between academics and their corporate counterparts working on sensor networks, a burgeoning technology that promises to improve everything from home appliances to homeland security. Now the wall is coming down: with Linda Grosser, associate director of the Center for Information and Systems Engineering (CISE), Paschalidis has recently launched the Sensor Network Consortium (SNC), a forum to encourage partnerships between researchers in industry and academia.
Sensor networks are quietly pervading everyday life. A sensor network usually features a constellation of miniature devices that monitor a wide range of things, from vibrations in factory equipment to the presence of toxic chemicals and biological weapons in subway stations. Cheap, lightweight, and built with tiny radios, the sensors talk to one another, coordinating their reconnaissance and relaying their findings to a distant computer. A washing machine, for example, might notify the manufacturer of an imminent problem over a wireless Internet connection. The owner might then receive an e-mail from the dealer to schedule a service visit for a part that may not break for several weeks.
The idea for SNC germinated last spring, when CISE hosted a symposium on the future of sensor networks. Participants in the workshop included about 150 faculty from universities and engineers from local companies involved in sensor technology. “At the time we realized there was a lot of activity in sensor networks here in the Northeast,” says Paschalidis, who is also codirector of CISE, “yet there seemed to be no forum where companies could come together, especially with people in academia.”
While similar consortiums have emerged on the West Coast, SNC is the first of its kind in the Northeast. A number of local start-ups, among them Millennial Net, Inc., Ember Corporation, and Sensicast, Inc., have already paid the $6,500 fee to join the consortium, which includes a growing number of faculty members from ENG, CAS, SMG, Harvard University, and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Boston University is an ideal hub for SNC, Paschalidis says, because researchers here are tackling some of the most challenging problems in sensor networking. While the technology for building tiny, cheap, and intelligent sensors is developing rapidly, he explains, the challenge now is to develop theories for managing the flow of information among hundreds or even thousands of networked sensors. He and his CISE colleagues recently received a $2.5 million award from the National Science Foundation’s Division of Design, Manufacturing, and Industrial Innovation to design sensors that communicate with one another, learn on the job, and tolerate extreme environments.
CISE faculty believe that sensor networks will play an important role in large-scale industrial settings. In factories, for instance, sensors will be embedded in tools and machines to identify problems before they cause catastrophic failures. A variety of sensors could be used to keep track of fuel and raw materials at every step of production, providing a real-time inventory that would dramatically improve planning and supply chain management.
Locating personnel and mobile equipment such as forklifts within an industrial campus can be a major bottleneck to efficiency and safety. By tagging these mobile elements with radio frequency identification (RFIDs) tags, similar to the EZ-pass units used on the Massachusetts Turnpike, companies would have an up-to-the-minute map of the location of each item. RFIDs are also expected to have a major impact in retail. Instead of bar codes, items in supermarkets and department stores will have tiny RFIDs that identify themselves to sensors on the shelves, giving companies valuable real-time inventories.
Membership has its privileges
Both industry and academia stand to gain from SNC. At semiannual meetings, participants will have opportunities to network the old-fashioned way, and the consortium will support ensuing partnerships by hosting meetings and scheduling company site visits and university lab tours. Teams of academic and private researchers are more likely to win federal and state funding, Paschalidis says, because agencies such as the National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense prefer research teams with diverse expertise. Members of SNC may attend a seminar series at BU, where prominent researchers will give lectures on their current work. They also have access to a members-only Web site, which features an online chatroom and periodic updates on relevant papers and technical reports.
BU faculty in SNC will have their fingers on the pulse of sensor networks in the marketplace. Exchanging ideas with businesses will keep academics in tune with “what’s relevant in industry, what’s most likely to have an impact,” says Grosser. “For undergraduate and graduate students, I think this is a unique opportunity for them to see what’s happening outside the walls of academia, to develop relationships with people who could potentially be their future employers.”
It’s not yet clear how these town-gown partnerships will take shape, but it’s likely that ENG, CAS, and GRS students will have opportunities to intern at local companies developing sensor networks. Not only would this provide students with valuable experience, Paschalidis says, but it would also give businesses access to highly trained personnel “who understand hardware issues and also the mathematics to pose and solve some of the network problems that arise. It’s not so easy for companies to find such people.”
Having the best and brightest available will also help start-ups jump-start their research agendas. “For some companies that don’t have the deep pockets to initiate research themselves,” Grosser says, “the forum will be a place where they can consult professors and students who are thinking about these problems and can give them neutral feedback.” The consortium won’t be a “marketing show,” she adds, where the companies are out hawking their best wares.
The goal, Paschalidis says, is to minimize competition among SNC partners and maximize the benefits for all parties involved. “We hope to facilitate and accelerate technology transfer from our work here at the University to industry,” he says. “But in many ways, we think that industry will to some extent shape and guide our research, too, helping us identify what the most important issues are that need to be addressed and where further research needs to be done.”
11
February 2005
Boston University
Office of University Relations