Alan Gibney was over at Arup a couple of weeks ago testing a Wireless Sensor Network design tool in number 8 Fitzroy Street that he developed during his PhD on a tool for wifi access point positioning.

Using a 3D info of the building the tool allows us to figure out the best location for network gateways based on the required location of sensing nodes and the material characteristics of the building. This particular installation was of interest since the majority of the office is open plan which means that the "stuff" that interferes with wireless signals is much more dynamic and difficult to model than say a concrete wall or a glass partition which is traditionally quite stationary and has modelable properties.

Data Capture Process

The process shown in the sketch above involved 1] identifying sensor locations on the fourth floor of number 8 Fitzroy, 2] walking around the floor plate taking measurements of signal strength for each node in different areas, 3] mapping the signal strength, 4] generating a heatmap of gateway options, 5] running agent based optimisation algos to select optimal gateway positions.

Signal strength of node in different locations of office

The signal strengths were then loaded into the design tool to verify that the actual were similar enough to those predicted in the model. With a mean error of 1.41 the model seemed pretty robust.

The design tool then allows a variety of gateway / sensor nodes positions to be tested and compared for different types of optimisation (battery life, signal robustness, minimising nodes required etc.)

Topology of possible WSN

A ray launching method is used to propogate the signal strength from a node to a gateway with the journey being recalculated using a motif model that describes the radion propogation model of a material. The image below shows the heat map generated for a gateway positioned in the open plan area of the office.

Candidate gateway locations

Measurement vs Prediction

Heat map based on signal strength from gateway

Next steps are to use the design tool to model the whole building in preparation to roll out a 200+ node WSN in the building. The aim of the installation will be to monitor light (lux) levels in the office alongside occupancy to analyse and optimise both light comfort levels and energy efficiency.

More detail on the WSN design tool is available at:

Motif Model

Propagation Model

Optimisation Algorithms

All images on Flickr

DG INFSO (Information Society and Media Directorate-General of the European Commission) is exploring the idea of pilot projects on "Open innovation for future Internet-enabled services in "smart cities". Their recent communication "A Strategy for ICT R&D and Innovation in Europe: Raising the Game" recommended that "the CIP will support SMEs piloting highly innovative technologies, and the development of open platforms for user-driven innovation".

As such under the "Competitiveness and innovation programme" (CIP), theme 4 "CIP ICT PSP" will probably consist of 5 pilot projects to be funded on internet based technologies and services in the city. At least one will have a focus on use of RFID technologies. Call expected Q1/2010 deadline Q2, info day Jan 2010. More at http://ec.europa.eu/ict_psp/

Making a strategic move from islands of services to common open platforms requires investment beyond the scope of a single application developer or city. It is important that cities connect, share and identify common best practice through pathfinder projects that can drive the development of common open platforms. User-driven open innovation methodologies or ecosystems such as the Living Labs are being proposed to nurture this process.

Pilots are being proposed that would combine all three of the following synergistic elements: 1) user-driven open innovation, 2) connected smart cities, and 3) Internet-based services.

Ideas around the following themes are of interest:

• smart living: participatory urban planning and co-design of spaces
• green digital agenda: master-plans for digital infrastructure to enable low carbon, e.g. energy production, environmental monitoring, buildings and facility management, traffic and transport ('Urban Information Architecture' or CIM in Arup)
• The citizen in transformation: citizen as an active co-producer, as
• well as consumer, of content and services, e.g. wellbeing, health, inclusion and participative democracy

The only pity is that it will be five large scale (10mil Euro each?) projects rather than one hundred 50k Euro projects. Just think of the diversity of urban informatic / internet of things prototypes you could build around Europe with that finance...

Still if you have any project ideas you would like to pursue around the theme of user centred / urban design led applications that the future internet may be able to support then please get in touch. They EC are keen for these projects to be urban design 'pulled' rather than technology 'pushed'.

Brussels 16.11.09

Interesting SENSEI quarterly meeting at Telenor in Oslo. The WP5 guys spent most of the week hacking in the reception of the Radisson where wifi was good and ports were open to get the demo working for the plenary on Thursday. The pan European testbed is starting to take shape with islands of sensor networks in Norway (2 in the plenary room using two different sensor platforms), Finland (Sensinode) and Romania (where the primary Sensei platform is hosted).

Had some interesting discussions on the proposed field trials - three have been proposed to date including:

1] environmental monitoring using mobile sensor nodes fixed to buses in Belgrade (EYU)

2] workplace monitoring using room access, comfort data, booking information (TID)

3] sports / environmental monitoring in the customisabale environment at eXperience Lab (UTwente)

In the pipeline is to create a SENSEI wrapper to connect the current Arup sensor network data. I need to also throw in a couple of actuatable devices in there. Need to explore possibilities of connecting to and from SENSEI platform via Pachube. Second Life was also mentioned as an interesting platform to test the horizontalisation theme. If we can create a connection between SENSEI applications and objects in SL then we have a virtual mechanism to test multiple uses of SENSEI data.

Also discussed in the field trial session was the issue of horizontalisation. A key goal of the SENSEI architecture is to facilitate the ability for nodes within islands of sensors networks to be re-used by multiple applications. It would be interesting to do an Architecture School project during one of the field trials where all the sensors / actuators being generated for the field trial are accessible for a group of designers to re-purpose / re-imagine the kinds of services that such data could create. Get in touch if you are interested and have a bunch of students...

The photo at the top of the post is of the Telenor buildings in Fornebu, Oslo. I was impressed with the art around the building - striking to me was the digital facade when i arrived which advised that i "think differently" and "be kind to others". The buiding long facade installation was created in 2002 by Jenny Holzer. I also loved the Daniel Buren columns and the large glass mosaic:

More photos on flickr

BOP - Making Sense of Space was a £1 million, two-year, multidisciplinary project, funded by the UK government’s Technology Strategy Board. It investigated how ubiquitous computing, using wireless sensor networks (WSN), could be used to create a better understanding of the creative workplace. The project ended in December last year but I am still finalising the last few *project management* items.

I have been asked by a few people to provide a summary of the project and what we learnt. A summary pdf was created for the final conference. Below are my thoughts.

What did we do? BOP gathered quantitative and qualitative data about the physical environment, the use of space and the mood of the work force. The WSN toolkit enabled the collecting, manipulating and displaying of both tangible environmental factors, for example, light levels, heat levels, noise levels and people’s presence, and workforce reports on intangible factors, such as perceptions of personal energy levels, sense of well-being, stress and feelings of connectedness with others. In practical terms this meant we deployed a 20 node WSN capturing environment data, activity based sensors and prototyped several different polling devices.

Crossbow WSN - light, temperature, pressure

Arduino based CO2 sensor

Arduino based activity sensors - presence at meeting tables

Beastie based activity sensors - ultrasounder to monitor corridor activity

Weigh your opinion - polling devices

Visualisation - ticker playing in entrance to office

Visualisation - intranet, screen based

Auralisation

Why do this? Organisations are potentially interested in space from three main perspectives: cost efficiency; employee performance; and brand image. Current measurement practice relies largely on hard-wired sensors, for monitoring of building services, and on manual clipboard surveys and/or online surveys for occupant feedback. Relative to these approaches, the toolkit offered several advantages, such as easier, cheaper data collection, more rapid analysis/presentation and the wherewithal to collect a broader set of data. In addition, the use of playful ‘front-ends’ offered the prospects of higher participation rates, hence more complete data sets, while the use of rapid visualisation techniques offered the prospect of a speedy feedback loop to building/office managers, line managers or the work groups themselves.

What did we learn? Here are my top three:
- The WSN technology worked but takes longer than acceptable to set up and use. Getting a network configured to reliably measure the data you want without intervention is not trivial.
- It is difficult to solicit qualitative environment information in an automated manner. Whilst the polling devices worked well I often found the data analysis sessions left me wishing we had measured more, or differently. I often doubted the scientific validity of the conclusions we reached.
- Presenting the sensory objects and data in a human readable manner increased peoples desire to participate / interact with an object. Sensing and monitoring should be a two way street. (maybe this is why self surveillance works)

Ubiquitous computing is still in its commercial infancy. BOP was the first project to use WSN to get a better understanding of the fit between built environments and the organisations and people who use them.

Other resources:
more photos on flickr
summary podcast with ppt slides
video of an IET presentation I made on this project

We have been working heads down for the past few months on a new EC FP7 project called SENSEI. The goal of SENSEI is to provide the real-time sensor and actuator dimension of next generation network and service infrastructures. Or as the project website puts it:

In order to realise the vision of Ambient Intelligence in a future network and service environment, heterogeneous wireless sensor and actuator networks (WS&AN) have to be integrated into a common framework of global scale and made available to services and applications via universal service interfaces. SENSEI creates an open, business driven architecture that fundamentally addresses the scalability problems for a large number of globally distributed WS&A devices. It provides necessary network and information management services to enable reliable and accurate context information retrieval and interaction with the physical environment. By adding mechanisms for accounting, security, privacy and trust it enables an open and secure market space for context-awareness and real world interaction.

The tangible outputs of the SENSEI project include:

1) plug and play architecture / protocol
2) open service interface
3) efficient WS&AN island solutions (targeting 5nJ/bit)
4) pan European test platform

Our focus has been on supporting the scenario development and hopefully over the next month or two I will post some the scenarios that we have been finding most interesting. The themes we have been focusing on include Smart City, Healthcare and Transport.

The project fits under Future Internet - ICT Challenge 1: Pervasive and Trusted Network and Service Infrastructures

The end of 2007 saw the final conference for the DTI Bop project. There has been a number of PR items around it including airtime on BBC Radio 5 (on the morning of the conference) and BBC Radio 4's Today programme. It also appeared in Design Week. The move into 2008 means the two DTI / TSB projects we have been working on applying wireless sensor networks within an office environment are coming to a close but two new projects are starting up.

The first is an EU FP7 project called SENSEI (evolved from EU FP6 project called e-Sense) looking at networks of wireless sensor networks. We are providing input to the scenarios and business requirements.

The second called ITOBO is with UCC and is funded by Science Foundation Ireland. Other partners include HSG, CYLON, Vector FM, and Intel. ITOBO will undertake research in Information and Communication Technology that will enable us to develop a holistic, methodological framework for life-cycle oriented information management and decision support in the construction and energy-management sectors. The domain-specific goal is to develop an anticipating (smart) building that operates on an energy efficient and user-friendly basis while reducing its maintenance costs. (More info for Arup staff is on the research wiki)

In Versaille at the European Construction Technology Platform (ECTP) conference. The ECTP has been created to establish a voice for the european constuction sector with the European Commission (EC) and in particular at the moment Framework 7 funding. The days were a mix of EC representative presentations, member presentations (from industry and academy) and a series of brokerage events around the 7 focus areas of the platform (networking opportunities to support the creation of collaborative projects). The focus areas are: innovative use of underground space, a living cultural heritage for an attractive Europe, ICT supported new integrated processes for the consturction sector, high added value construction materials, resource efficient and clean buildings, sustainable management of transport and utility networks, environment and quality of life for all. (Arup are coordinating the ICT processes focus area with VTT and facilitated the brokerage workshop in quite a bizarre room - Salle Lulli in the Palais des Congres)

The Strategic Research Agenda for ECTP is available for downloadable at http://www.ectp.org

The final ECTP road-map is due to be published to the EC in March but funding for FP7 starts in early 2007.

Presented the DTI Bop project at the event in a poster session for national technology programme projects. Other relevent posters are posted to flickr.

Notes from FP6 UK Information Society Technologies meeting at DTI conference centre 06.10.06 to launch the the ICT component of FP7 to UK audience.

The 7 themes for ICT in FP7

Introduced main features and proposed priorities for 2007-08. First ICT call in Jan/Feb 2007. Seven *challenges* are proposed each with several *target* areas for research:

1. network and service infrastructure (250 mil euro) (Sarah: items such as built in security and trust, full support of distributed value chains - SOA, computing as utility)

2. cognitive systems, robotics and interaction (450 mil euro) (Alvise, Tristan, Darren: looking at things like robots adapting to context, machines and systems that understand their users and/or their environments**, systems that understand multimedia and multi modal digital information)

3. components, systems, engineering (200 mil euro) (at electronic level - not for Arup)

4. digital libraries and content (400 mil euro) (Rebecca G, Tom, Tony, Kevin: mass-individualisation of learning experiences with ICT, efficient editing and knowledge management systems)

5. sustainable and personalised healthcare (175 mil euro) (Gavin, Phil: they mentioned computational modelling and simulation of organs as a specific objective, also met chap from Primal Pictures - http://www.primalpictures.com/ or http://www.anatomy.tv/)

6. mobility, environment, energy (180 mil euro) (David, Amanda: items included optimised traffic management, integrated management systems to monitor and react to environmental risks*)

7. ICT for independent living and inclusion (75 mil euro) (Rebecca M: ICT solutions that will substantially reduce the 30% of the population currently not using ICT, user friendly systems beyond the PC and current technologies**)

(For info i am interested in challenge 1: target = reconfigurability, adaptability, interoperability, service composition and challenge and those targets above marked with **)

Funding schemes

3 types of project:
A. Collaboration projects (STREPS - or IP)
B. Networks of excellence
C. Coordination and support actions

2100 mil total split as follows

1150 mil euro Jan 07 call - 1 stage submission (just long prop)
650 mil euro May 07 call - 2 stage submission (short then full)
200 mil euro Nov 07 call - 2 stage submission (short then full)

FET futures and emerging technologies open 65 mil euro over 2 years proactive 125 mil euro

fixed over head rate they use (where people cannot demonstrate their own ie SME's) is 60% (dropping to 40% for projects starting in 2009)

Rules for participation: minimum 3 different member states must be involved, big co's (Arup) get 50% funding for R&D and demonstrator type activity (Uni, public, SME's get 75%) and 100% funding for management activities.
Full details available in early 2007
Industry evaluators needed (call in november from site below) paid 450 (euro?) per day plus expenses.

more detail at http://fp6uk.ost.gov.uk/ if you register you will get notified of announcements, calls etc. and DW has ppt handouts from day for those who want to see them (just add a comment at bottom).

Application tips:

Evaluators have to read many of these - keep it simple, to the point, understandable on page one and then show why you are the dream team
Reference the ETP reports - especially the SRA's, strategic research agendas - since the technology programmes have been setup to influence the agenda of the FP7 programme (Arup are leading ECTP PICT - european construction technology platform, processing and ICT - this MUST be referenced for built environment projects) - http://cordis.europa.eu/ist/about/techn-platform.htm
Don't wait for call to start to pull together dream team since once call is made time is short...
Get advice from the UK National Contact Point (Peter Walters) - go talk to them and see what they think of your application.