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via ces.cnet
LAS VEGAS--This is what Bluetooth was invented for: a tong you stick in the soil of your plant that tells you when to water it.
The Flower Power is a gadget that Parrot will bring to market at some stage this year -- there is no word on price yet while the company works out how much it can get away with charging. The fork has sensors that send the information they pick up from the soil of your plant via Bluetooth to an iPad app.
Once you have told the app what the plant is, it cross-references the information received with the info in its database to tell you which day it needs watering, whether it's getting enough sun, and if it's hot or cold. You can move the tongs to different plants, and see information on them all on your tablet screen. It also works on lawns.
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A $70 gizmo from Leap Motion could change the way we interact with computers - and eventually, lots of other things, too.
Wired called this "the best gesture-control system we've ever tested." The Verge called it "the next big thing in computing."
Leap Motion has already received preorders worth tens of millions of dollars, says Andy Miller, the company’s president and COO. (...)
Because Leap Motion has big plans. Laptops and desktops are just the start. “The consumer is side a way of getting it out there, but the bigger business might be licensing deals,” Miller says. “We have been contacted by thousands of businesses that want to use this.”
He reels off potential applications that range from robotic surgery to fighter jets, from semiconductor clean rooms to fast-food restaurant kitchens. “We’ve talked about seatback screens on planes,” he says. “Climate control systems. Set-top boxes and TVs and remote controls. Tablets. MRIs.”
McDonald’s and Jack in the Box like the idea of putting Leap Motion controllers in their kitchens so that workers can manipulate screens without having to touch them.
Others want to use Leap Motion in casinos, nightclubs and DJ booths to let people control huge video boards.
“This is a big thing that really could change the way we interact with devices,” Miller says.
Dan Lyons / read write 24 Dec 2012
A year ago, two MIT Media Lab graduates raised half a million dollars on Kickstarter to create Twine, a cigarette-pack-sized chunk of Internet magic that promised to turn any object in your home into a web-connected, interactive "smart product."...
Flip the rubbery, featureless box over on its back and two instructions reveal themselves: "Place this side up," and "go to Twinesetup.com." From there, configuring Twine feels like an adventure instead of a chore. Wow, it just connected to the Web by itself … Now a little light is turning on … Whoa, now I can see an image of it in my Web browser, sensing the temperature … What will this thing do next?
With Twine, building your own personal "Internet of things" is supposed to be easier than programming a VCR. And now that the product is available for purchase, it looks like creators John Kestner and David Carr have very nearly delivered on that ambitious promise.
John Pavlus 27 Nov 2012
Via Eugene Ch'ng
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On June 30, 2011, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals various new advanced vicinity sensors coming to future iPads.
New vicinity sensors coming to the iPad include RFID, Infrared and Ultrasonic. The latter utilizes advanced 3D scanning and imaging capablilities. The advanced sensors are designed to locate office equipment anywhere within an enterprise and could actually devise floor plans to properly located devices. Users will also be able to drag document icons to the printer or videos and/or art to a video projector for a presentation using Keynote or Power Point. Without a doubt, Apple is aiming to further advance the iPad into the enterprise. (...)
For example, one or more of an indoor GPS, a Bluetooth antenna, a radio frequency identification (RFID) device, an ultrasonic device, an infrared device, and so forth, may be used to determine if apparatuses are in the vicinity. In some embodiments, the same technology used to find devices in the vicinity of the electronic device may be used to determine the identification of the device. For example, RFID may be used to determine the presence of a particular device and the device's identifying information. In other embodiments, a first technology may be used to determine if apparatuses are in the vicinity of the electronic device and a second technology may be used to obtain identifying information. More information on this is presented below under "Indoor Global Positioning Scheme."
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The next wave of growth in personal computing won’t come from PCs (obviously) or even phones, but from sensor-laden devices.
(...) Sometimes these sensor-laden devices are called the Internet of Things, but I don’t think that fully captures the phenomenon I’m describing. I call it “Smart Body, Smart World,” because the devices themselves (the “things”) are not the point — it’s about the data they collect, the way the data is interpreted, and the smarter decisions we make when we have access to these sensor-sourced data and insights.
Sarah Rotman Epps (@srepps) is a Senior Analyst serving Consumer Product Strategy professionals at Forrester Research. To learn more about this research, visit the full report here.
Digits, a wrist-worn gloveless sensor developed by Microsoft Research in Cambridge, U.K., enables 3-D computer interaction in any environment and is practical beyond computer gaming. Please find the video with more technical details here.
Via Mushin
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Sensors of your heart, blood, and brain are coming to market. These may a boon to science and personal health. For the companies involved, they may be goldmines of intimate real-time data on millions of subjects.
Later this year, a Boston-based company called MC10 will offer the first of several “stretchable electronics” products that can be put on things like shirts and shoes, worn as temporary tattoos or installed in the body. These will be capable of measuring not just heart rate, the company says, but brain activity, body temperature and hydration levels. Another company, called Proteus, will begin a pilot program in Britain for a “Digital Health Feedback System” that combines both wearable technologies and microchips the size of a sand grain that ride a pill right through you. Powered by your stomach fluids, it emits a signal picked up by an external sensor, capturing vital data. Another firm, Sano Intelligence, is looking at micro needle sensors on skin patches as a way of deriving continuous information about the bloodstream.
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ReadwriteWeb writes: "Microsoft applied for a patent on electromyography (EMG) controlled computing on Thursday, suggesting that a future smart wristwatch or armband might simply detect a user’s muscle movements and interpret them as gestures or commands. The “Wearable Electromyography-Based Controller” could also use a network of small sensors attached to the body, all communicating wirelessly with a central hub. Microsoft first treated the human body as just another input device when it launched the Kinect sensor, which tracks a user’s face and body via an onboard camera. Computing via brainwaves has also been proposed as an alternative method of input. Finally, EMG-controlled devices, such as prosthetics, have been talked about for some time. Still, all three methods have their challenges.Comments In the future, Microsoft apparently believes, people may simply twitch their fingers or arms to control a computer, game console or mobile device. http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsoft-tech-to-control-computers-with-a-flex-of-a-finger.php
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Sensors are everywhere around us from smartphone touchscreens to elevator buttons to thermostats. These sensor devices, which receive and respond to a signal, are a linchpin of the so-called “Internet of Things.” As they become smaller, cheaper and require less power they are being deployed in more places that we encounter every day — whether we are aware of it or not. Nice interview w/ MIT researcher Joshua Smith.
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According to an interview with the general manager of the MEMS division of STMicroelectronics, Benedetto Vigna, smartphones will soon offer up a whole slew of new embedded sensors that could help to make mobile health services more accessible. The introduction of extra sensors into consumer phones and other devices will really be just the first step into finding sensors everywhere according to Vigna. He states that in the next few years we will be seeing sensors in our socks, shoes, glasses and household fixtures like the garbage can — all aimed at measuring a person’s environmental health factors.
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Much like the Twine device that we saw last November, and the more recent Electric Imp, the Knut is a small sensor-equipped module that enables you to remotely monitor equipment and spaces in your home. The Knut comes equipped with a temperature sensor so that you can monitor the temperature of your wine refrigerator, humidor, basement, etc. It connects to the internet via Wi-Fi and can send out alerts and information to its owner by way of email and text message.
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Researchers at MIT and the University of Pittsburgh have successfully resuscitated non-oscillating Belousov-Zhabotinsky (BZ) gel by exerting a mechanical force: a process akin to the resuscitation of a human heart. By exhibiting a chemical response to a mechanical stimulus (a rare feat for non-living matter), it's thought the material could lead to the development of artificial skin that would enable robots to feel and self-repair. "Think of it like human skin, which can provide signals to the brain that something on the body is deformed or hurt," said Anna Balazs, Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the Swanson School of Engineering at Pittsburgh. "This gel has numerous far-reaching applications, such as artificial skin that could be sensory - a holy grail in robotics."
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We've heard of soccer balls that play a tune when kicked, sure, and we're pumped to see the World Cup in 3D, but it's not often that someone comes up with a serious technological makeover for the sport that's nearly as old as life itself. CTRUS, however, is just that -- a theoretical revolution in soccer that begins with the all-important ball. To start with, a reinforced elastic structure means that CTRUS doesn't require any air. (So long, pump.) Next, GPS and RFID chips keep track of the ball's position at all times, and tell it to light up in different colors when it scores a goal or is accomplice to a nefarious violation. (Farewell, referee.) Last but not least, the sphere itself will report back with accelerometers that measure the ball's kick force and travel speed, and a camera that could (with magical software stabilization, of course) actually film action from the ball's own POV.
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from Global Brain
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So, what exactly is bringing the Internet of Things to fruition? A big factor is the plunging cost of connectivity, which is being driven by the emergence of Heterogeneous Networks (often referred to as “HetNets”). HetNets offer a way to increase the density and bandwidth available to mobile devices.
To give you an idea of their potential scale, Free.fr, one of the world’s first HetNets, located in France, has more than 4 million WiFi hotspots connected to the network and enjoys data transfer costs that are probably far below $1 per gigabyte. (...)
The second major factor driving the Internet of Things is the explosion of low-cost, smart, standardized sensor networks. Consumer hobbyists are leading the way here. Kickstarter, the world’s largest funding platform for creative projects is hosting numerous sensor projects that are designed to enable consumers to rapidly deploy and utilize large numbers of sensors around the home and office.
Raspberry Pi is one of the most popular recent initiatives in this space. The company has created a credit card-sized computer that integrates with physical devices like TVs and keyboards to give users PC functionality, such as spreadsheets and word processing, without having to buy a computer. Designed for hobbyists, it starts at a mere $25.
Another interesting initiative is Sensordrone, a multi-sensor device for smartphones that was recently funded by Kickstarter that gives phones even more capabilities, like connecting to printers. In another development, Nokia pledged to push the envelope in terms of adding new and innovative sensors and geo-location capabilities to their phones.
By Paul Brody 30 Dec 2012
Via Spaceweaver
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PrimeSense, which developed the 3D sensing technology used in Microsoft’s Kinect, is set to unveil a compact 3D sensor that can fit into a variety of consumer electronic devices.
The Capri 1.25 embedded 3D sensor is around one-tenth the size of PrimeSense’s current generation of 3D sensors, the Israeli company said Tuesday in a press release. Capri has improved 3D sensing algorithms, it said.
Apple’s control through patents over many elements of touch-based user interfaces discourages competitors from innovating in this area, Malik Saadi, principal analyst with Informa Telecoms & Media, said Wednesday. Many vendors are looking into alternatives, like touch-free gesture recognition that can be facilitated by 3D sensors, he said.
Samsung is looking at gesture recognition and will probably be deploying it next year or soon after, Saadi said.
Voice and gesture recognition are key to the future of smartphones, Saadi said. The combination of touch with voice and gesture recognition will very likely lead to a superior user experience and innovative application development, he said.
- Macworld Australia
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Robots have seemingly unlimited potential when it comes to search and rescue operations - they can enter hazardous environments, quickly map dangerous areas for first responders, and help establish communication links and a game plan for larger recovery and triage efforts. But in these scenarios, humans aren't going anywhere. We still need breathing, thinking bodies on the ground. So a team at MIT has built a wearable sensor pack that can "roboticise" human first responders, allowing the first person into a dangerous environment to digitally map it in realtime, just like a robot.
The prototype platform consists of a variety of sensors - accelerometers, gyroscopes, a camera, and a LiDAR (light detection and ranging) rangefinder, among others - affixed to a sheet of plastic roughly the size of a tablet computer, which is in turn strapped to the user's chest. These sensors wirelessly beam data to a laptop, allowing others to remotely view the user's progress through an environment. It also allows the sensor platform to build a digital map of the area as the user moves through it, providing the responders that follow with far more situational awareness than they would have otherwise.
Australian Popular Science Clay Dillow 25 Sep 2012
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Created by Bounce Imaging, the tennis ball-sized device is equipped with six cameras that allow it to send back a 360-degree view of its environment. Those cameras can take up to 2 photos per second, after which the images are sent back to the user's smartphone. The device is also fitted with sensors that give it the ability to send back environmental data such as temperature and the presence of dangerous gases. According to the company's founder, Francisco Aguilar, future versions of the device will also feature a Geiger counter, offering data on radioactivity levels in environments such as damaged nuclear plants.
See video.
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Summary via postscapes
Andrew Fisher @ajfisher put together a lengthy post on Tuesday titled "Towards a sensor commons"
Begins with: "The action taking place is the creation of what I call the Sensor Commons. Why is this a revolution? Because as a population we are deciding that governments and civic planners no longer have the ability to provide meaningful information at a local level."
Definition:
"For me the Sensor Commons is a future state whereby we have data available to us, in real time from a multitude of sensors that are relatively similar in design and method of data acquisition and that data is freely available whether as a data set or by API to use in whatever fashion they like.
My definition is not just about “lots of data from lots of sensors” – there is a subtlety to it implied but the “relatively similar in design and method of data acquisition” statement."
and then goes on to break down 5 things he thinks are requirements for the Sensor Commons: - Gain trust
- Become dispersible
- Be highly visible
- Be entirely open
- Be upgradeable
About a decade ago, I would stand in the middle of a square somewhere and imagine that everything I saw could and would one day be possibly connected. In my mind that was not such a new idea. Animists in Africa and Asia have for centuries talked about "living" inanimate objects, believing that things had a soul and taking good care of them. Humans are meaning-making machines, so we invest inanimate landscapes and objects with all kinds of qualities that they cannot really possess.
Ten years on, that daydream is becoming a reality with the Internet of Things. Loosely defined as a global process to enhance all objects with some kind of digital address, IoT is already coming to you: to your home as the smart meter that will streamline all your electrical appliances; to your connected car that will have distance sensors and eCall to alert accidents; and to your body as a patch in an intelligent T-shirt or the Siemens hearing aid that aims to pick up the fire truck noise and soften it before you “hear” it. In terms of "the next big thing" this is as big as fire and the book.
And it’s inevitable. Why? Because a confluence of historical factors has come together to make what was once the domain of science fiction a reality. Let’s quickly take a look at those drivers.
Rob Van Kranenburg @ FastCompany
Via Jose Murilo, P2P Foundation, Flemming Funch
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Seoul researchers have developed an easy-to-fabricate, membrane-based strain gauge system that’s as sensitive (and almost as flexible) as human skin... ... sensitive enough to feel the fall of water droplets, a human pulse in the wrist, and even the whisper-light tread of a lady-bug walking across the “electronic skin.”
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Oakland's extensive network of CO2 detectors should help us figure out whether California's new cap-and-trade system is working.
It is called The BEACON network and many of the senors are to be placed on the roofs of local schools, "in an effort to get students thinking about CO2 and its effects on the climate." - @ddrrnt
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Mobile not only increases the reach of services but it provides additional context, such as location and presence. Location technologies–such as triangulation, wireless location signatures, and GPS–will be combined to provide rich indoor and outdoor location for both people and things. In the future, embedded sensors that provide environmental conditions such as humidity and temperature will be commonplace. Sensors will provide another aspect of context that services can tap into.
For example, your mobile device has access to your calendar so it knows if you’re running late for a meeting in downtown L.A. It can alert your car to connect to services like Streetline to help you find an available (sensor-enabled) parking spot while alerting your manager that you’re late. Other examples could link contextual attributes, such as presence and location, with enterprise social software. Instead of using a paging system, a nurse could use enterprise social software on a tablet to locate an available cardiologist on the third floor of a hospital and a defibrillator on the fourth floor.
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Professor Peter Cochrane, chairman and director of Cochrane Associates, said mankind has become highly dependent on machines to get nearly everything done in the life. Therefore the world is currently challenged by a rising tide of complexity and enclosure of machines used for transportation, weather systems and the gathering of seismic data. Prof Cochrane referred to computers as ‘dumb'. He believes in spite of their capabilities, they still put a large part of the work on their users. Likewise, he said the internet burdens surfers with much effort with the requirement of data input for information research — time that could be invested more wisely in creativity output.
"We need artificial intelligence and machines that bring new levels of creativity. We must have sensors, but not necessary processing power or memory. Sensors have to be entropic in order to make changes using models and building layers of complexity over time," he said. "Laptop computers are dumb as they don't have sensors or adaptability. We are rolling out intelligent sensors, and our future machines will see, hear, smell, detect and communicate."
The future outlined by Prof Cochrane is essentially the ushering in of the age of the internet of things, which refers to uniquely identifiable objects (things) and their virtual representations in an internet-like structure. The term was first used by Kevin Ashton in 1999.
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tōd (pronounced "toad") is an exciting and powerful new way to connect your mobile device* to the world around and right in front of you, using our bite-sized ultra low power Bluetooth 4.0 enabled Smart Beacons. Simply attach or place a tōd Smart Beacon, that can run for years on a single coin-cell battery onto anything, anywhere you want to extend mobile device or web functionality. Or, you can interact with Smart Beacons placed by others that you are allowed to connect with.
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Zaragoza, Spain-based Libelium has launched a new RFID/NFC module for its Waspmote sensor platform. The new radio module extends Waspmote features allowing the sensor data to be used in Location Based Services (LBS), such as asset tracking, supply chain monitoring, intelligent shopping or access management. By using RFID/NFC (passive sensors) along with ZigBee (active sensors), Libelium says asset tracking can be more accurate than ever along the whole supply chain process. Product management software such as ERPs will have access in real time to information related to remaining stock, storage and transportation conditions (temperature and humidity levels, vibrations, light exposure, etc), expiration dates and even consumer profiles, knowing time spent in front of a shelf or products picked up and not bought.
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