The National Science Foundation is giving away money again.
NSF wants ideas for sensing for toxic chemicals, explosives and biological agents. They want to develop sensor networkings in a distributed environment and envision arrays of reconfigurable, ultra low-power, wireless nodes with integrated processing and communications to processing centers for decision and response. Individual investigators, as well as by small teams are eligible to apply.
More information is available at The National Science Foundation and their Fastlane proposal form. Sensor workshops were held at Berkeley and Georgia Tech.
Proposals must be submitted by 5 p.m , March 06, 2003.
The European NanoBusiness Association (ENA) has announced plans to open nanotechnology hubs in 12 European cities in an effort to capitalise on research across Europe and boost interaction among businesses, research bodies and financial institutions. National labs, like Argonne, are hustling their spin-off, CityMainStreet, a Wireless Intelligent Remote Detection Systems. WIRDS gathers information from a wide variety of sources including chemical detectors, radiation monitors, biological samplers, language and voice finger printing systems, and high-speed video monitoring and rapidly transmit that information to a wide range of emergency and law enforcement responders. It integrates information from diverse sources and get it into the hands of response personnel quickly. WIRDS will also be deployed to create Smart Containers and shippers.
It sounds like what Pacific NW National Labs has been doing for years. PNW National Lab (PNL) developed similar disaster packages for FEMA. They used atmospheric modeling in conjunction with Microsoft Office products. It can map shelters that are away from nuclear or biological fallout, for example.
Battelle develops Chemical Sensors, Biological Sensors, and Imaging/X-Ray Sensors for government agencies and commercial entities. Here’s an inexpensive “lab-on-a-chip”, a ’sniffer’ for small aerial drones, Sensors Magazine and more on Biospace.
Self-organizing wireless-sensor networks, a realization of the Pentagon’s “smart-dust” has reached the prototype stage, worldwide. Researchers at U.C. Berkeley have developed an open-source hardware and software platform combining sensing, communications, and computing into a complete architecture. UC-Berkeley has contracted with Crossbow Technology (left) which uses TinyOS, and technology licenses from Intel.
At the 29 Palms Marine base in southern California, unmanned aircraft dropped about 30 wireless magnetic sensors along a road. Once safely on the ground, the sensors formed a wireless network and began looking for magnetic anomalies. As a vehicle passed by the sensors, they would detect the vehicle from its magnetic signature to estimate the vehicle’s speed and direction. The unmanned aircraft returned overhead to collect the data from the network and transmit them to the remote operation command headquarters. The entire development of the application, including the demonstration, took fewer than 60 days.
At the Intel developer Forum, in October 2002, the semiconductor giant revealed plans to apply nanotechnology and MEMS devices across a range of projects, including sensor networks and optical “building blocks” that will advance the integration of computing and communications.
Intel also said that it is running a field test of “sensor net” technology deploying a wireless network of MEMS sensors to record temperature, humidity, barometric pressure and infrared information to study an ecosystem without disturbing the wildlife.
Intel is collaborating with universities on long-range nanotechnology projects including carbon nanotubes and silicon nanowires, but cautioned that computing devices built with these components may be at least 10 years away.
Can a small college contribute? Beats me. But why not put ‘em in Wi-Fi birdhouses and supply “free” community LANs.
Kill two birds with one stone.
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