Media Tech Tonic #5: Linking Virtual and Real Worlds Through Sensor Networks, October 15, 2008
A presentation and Q&A with Joseph Paradiso who will talk about his work on sensor networks and how they can augment and mediate human experience, interaction, and perception. Joe Paradiso is Director of the Responsive Environments Group at the MIT Media Laboratory and also co-directs the Things That Think Consortium exploring the extreme fringe of embedded computation, communication, and sensing.
Location: MassArt, 621 Huntington Avenue, Boston
Room: Alumni Room, 11th Floor Tower Building
Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Time: 6:30pm to 8:30pm
Directions: By car | By T | Campus map (PDF)
Access: Free and open to the public
RSVP: Please REGISTER if you plan to attend using our contact form, we need to have an idea of how many people to expect
Note: If you’re driving, take a look at the additional driving directions at the end of this post.
Abstract
We are witnessing the dawn of a ubiquitous networked sensor infrastructure, leveraged by the increasingly low cost of microelectronics, sensors, and wireless technologies. As these now independent application-silo systems begin to converge through common standards, the world becomes covered by a seamless electronic “nervous system,” that extends across things, places, and people. One of the biggest challenges facing researchers is how to appropriately interface humans with this wealth of real-time information. Immediate applications of such an augmented awareness are readily evident in areas like supply chain and logistics management, urban optimization (e.g., transportation and energy), factory & plant operation, etc. Taking a broad perspective, however, this transition is profound - one’s interface into this environment can be envisioned as an extension of human perception, augmenting our five senses well beyond the canonical “here and now” and redefining the meaning of presence.
One way to connect people to such information is through online virtual world browsers, where sensed phenomena and features manifest as metaphoric constructs and animations, and where a user can easily shift the scale, location, and granularity of represented data. Similarly, a user in virtual space can “appear” through devices and actuators in the real world. We term the translation of sensed phenomena into the virtual space and the manifestation of virtual phenomena into the real world “Cross Reality,” where sensor/actuator networks tunnel information across the real/virtual divide. Going beyond Cross Reality is “Scalable Virtuality,” where the manifestation of virtual phenomena in the real world becomes a function of available and appropriate information portals, and the representation of real-world data in virtual space is dependent on dynamic privacy settings and local context.
Joseph Paradiso’s talk will overview recent work in embedded sensing by him and his students in the Responsive Environments Group at the MIT Media Lab that address this broad theme. The technical areas that he will touch on include high-bandwidth, wireless multimodal sensor clusters, massively distributed, ultra-low-power” featherweight” sensor nodes, parasitic energy scavenging and dynamic power management techniques. The impact of these technologies will be illustrated through several application examples involving cross-reality, affect-driven media queires, controllers for interactive media, active RFID for logistics management, biomotion capture, smart objects, human-computer interfaces and instrumented social interaction.
Biography
Joseph Paradiso is the Sony Career Development Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Laboratory, where he directs the Responsive Environments group, which explores how sensor networks augment and mediate human experience, interaction and perception, and co-directs the Things That Think Consortium, a group of industry sponsors and Media Lab researchers who explore the extreme fringe of embedded computation, communication, and sensing. After receiving a BS in Electrical Engineering and Physics summa cum laude from Tufts University in 1977, Paradiso became a K.T. Compton fellow at the Lab for Nuclear Science at MIT, receiving his PhD in physics there in 1981 for research conducted at CERN in Geneva. After two years developing precision drift chambers at the Lab for High Energy Physics at ETH in Zurich, he joined the Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, MA in 1984, where his research encompassed spacecraft control systems, image processing algorithms, underwater sonar, and precision alignment sensors for large high-energy physics detectors. He joined the Media Lab in 1994, where his current research interests include embedded sensing systems and sensor networks, wearable and body sensor networks, energy harvesting and power management for embedded sensors, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, localization systems, passive and RFID sensor architectures, human-computer interfaces, and interactive media. His honors include the 2000 Discover Magazine Award for Technological Innovation, and he has authored 200 articles and technical reports on topics ranging from computer music to power scavenging.
Additional Parking and Driving Directions
Parking will be available to attendees who drive in the Ward Street lot if you enter the lot between 5:45pm and 6:45pm. If you’re driving, take a close look at a Google Map of the area, finding the Ward Street Lot can be tricky the first time.
If you’re traveling west on Huntington Avenue from Downtown, as you pass the main campus on your right, take a left at the light at the Longwood Avenue intersection, crossing over the trolley tracks. Go straight to the stop sign and turn left, then immediately turn right onto Ward Street. MassArt’s parking lot is short distance ahead on the left.
If you’re traveling east on Huntington Avenue from Bringham Circle, take a right at the light at the Longwood Avenue intersection, then a quick left and right and you’re on Ward Street. MassArt’s parking lot is short distance ahead on the left.