Tag: sensors

Sensors, Robots and Rivers

Scientists at the Beacon Institute are working with IBM engineers to weave a network of sensors, robots and simulations that will monitor 500 km of New York’s Hudson River on a “minute-to-minute” basis, creating the most complex model ever created of a river’s flow.

the sensor network is almost certainly the biggest yet. let’s hope the resulting data is freely available

Compound-Eye Camera

He looked at biological imaging systems–in particular, the compound eyes of insects–for the design blueprint. The technology, called TOMBO (Thin Observation Module by Bound Optics), is actually a collection of 9 small lenses and software that analyzes the scene by mimicking the process that insects use to recognize the position, shape, and color of objects. The researchers have crammed TOMBO’s hardware into a tiny box the size of a shirt button. And in the age of increasingly smaller and thinner mobile gadgets, such a compound-eye camera could provide powerful image-taking and image-recognizing functions in, for example, a cell phone.

camera the size of a shirt button can extract 3D information from scenes and recognize objects.

SensorMap

Microsoft’s SensorMap layers live information into Web-based maps, but which will apparently be able to take in data from all kinds of sensors, including ones that generate what is effectively lifelogging data. What if I could create an avatar of myself that recreates in a virtual world what I’m doing in the physical world, so that my family could access it when I’m away on a business trip and keep up with what I’m doing?

i like! anything to augment reality bit by bit.