Science FictionSensor Networks

Diego PizzocaroD.Pizzocaro@cs.cf.ac.uk

PhD Forum: Food, Things and Stuff (FTS) 2009Cardiff University

What do you study?• Party/Pub , with a friend of mine (PhD student in Astrophysics)

• Stranger: “Oh so you are PhD students! What do you guys study?”

• My friend: “Astrophysics, star formation history”Stranger: “wow really cool!”

• Me: “Computer science...”Stranger: “Oh.....well........”

http://tom-purvis.com/images/blogFoto/gdrParty.jpg

Improving...

• Stranger: “What do you study?”

• Need to understand the level of expertise the stranger has:

• Me: “Have you ever heard about autonomous robotic systems?”

• Then there are two possible choices:

1) Stranger: “Yes sure” (never happened)

Me: “OK so my research is about similar systems but composed only of sensors, self-organizing and self-healing, etc....”

Improving...

• Stranger: “Not really...”

Me: “Have you ever seen Minority Report, the movie? Police men use robotic spiders which form coalitions to accomplish different tasks...”

Stranger: “Wow it is really cool...”

Me: “Oh by the way, my PhD is in Computer Science...”

Stranger: “No way, extremely cool!”

Me: “ :) ”

SciFi in Sensor Networks• How far is SciFi from real world sensor networks?

• Example:

• Autonomous spider robots are under development by the Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology (MAST) consortium.

• The Army Research Lab has given BAE Systems $38 million to lead and fund the project (headline of 5/1/2008).

Spider Robot Concept from BAEhttp://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=1619

Another example• 1. E. M. Carapezza and T. M. Molter,

“Sustainable unattended sensors for security and environmental monitoring,” in Proceedings of SPIE, vol. 7112 (SPIE, 2008), 71120O.

• It describes two ocean energy harvesting approaches(i.e. derive energy from natural underwater power sources)

• Goal: Providing sustainable power for distributed unattended sensor and unmanned underwater vehicle networks.

• Applications/Consequences: Continuos operation improves - knowledge of marine biological processes- no need to replace/recharge batteries- homeland security and port surveillance (e.g. surveillance against terroristic attacks to power plants)

Hybrid Organic-Synthetic Sensors?• Organic underwater power sources to power sensing devices/engines:

• For static sensors (i.e. motes):

• Microbial Fuel Cells(order of power: mW)

• It extracts electrons from metabolic processes of marine bacteria.

• For unmanned vehicles:

• Methane Hydrate Energy System(order of power: kW)

• Use Oxygen to extract methane gas from hydrate structures.

• Plankton produces oxygen!

• Track whales to gather plankton

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How to look for food?

• 1. K. H. Low, W. K. Leow, and M. H. Ang Jr, “Autonomic mobile sensor network with self-coordinated task allocation and execution,” Systems, Man and Cybernetics, Part C, IEEE Transactions on 36, no. 3 (2006): 315-327.

• IDEA: Mobile sensors self-organizes in coalitions to monitor the environment (e.g. look for whales)and accomplish tasks (e.g. collect plankton)

• MECHANISMS:

- Ant behavior schemes to monitor the environment.

- Self-organizing neural networks to coordinate the execution of tasks.

http://jasonernst.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/neural_network.jpghttp://ljs.academicdirect.org/A09/53_72_files/image005.jpg

Reality?

• From a videogame called MASS EFFECT (BioWare):

• The geth are a synthetic race of networked AIs,

• they blurry the boundaries between organic and synthetic.

• A lone geth has intelligence equivalent to animal instincts.

• In close proximity with other geth, they become more intelligent thanks to the network.

• Hybrid Organic-Synthetic Networked intelligent sensors are not far.

http://www.completemasseffect.com/images/8/8f/Geth_001.jpg

Science Fiction and CS• Science Fiction is mostly about CS:

Why not using it to make people interested in your research?

• There are many research papers connecting science fiction to CS (but also to other topics! e.g. physical sciences):

• 1. M. L. Dark, “Using Science Fiction Movies in Introductory Physics,” The Physics Teacher 43 (2005): 463.

• D. Sanderson, “Using Science Fiction to teach Computer Science”, Conference Proceedings of WWW@10 the dream and the reality, 2004

• 1. N. Jesse, “Autonomous Mobile Robots – From Science Fiction to Reality,” in Real World Applications of Computational Intelligence, 2005, 197-219,

Conclusion

• Why is it important to make other non-expert people interested in your research?

• Applying for grants

• Publishing your research

• ...

• “You do not really understand something unless you can explain it to your grandmother.” - Einstein

• Thanks for listening!