MIT’s SENSEable City Laboratory proclaims the real-time city has arrived.
The increasing deployment of sensors and hand-held electronics in recent years is allowing a new approach to the study of the built environment. The way we describe and understand cities is being radically transformed - alongside the tools we use to design them and impact on their physical structure. Studying these changes from a critical point of view and anticipating them is the goal of the new research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
MIT’s campus-wide network, completed in the fall of 2005, consists of nearly 3,000 access points using a combination of Avaya and Enterasys equipment. It’s run by the AirWave management platform and covers 9.4 million square feet of campus.
Among the experimental applications being put to use on the MIT network:
- iSpots: maps the dynamics of the wireless network in real time. Individual movement patterns that make up the daily life of the campus can be revealed, helping to answer many questions: Which physical spaces are preferred for work in the MIT community? How could future physical planning of the campus suit the community’s changing needs? Which location-based services would be most helpful for students and academics?
- iFIND” Improves social networking through “digitally augmented serendipity.” It enables users to voluntarily opt into a tracking system that reveals their location on campus, the idea being that it sparks impromptu group meetings, collaborations and non-accidental social interactions.
- Real Time Rome: Uses six different visual software to present real-time information about Rome. Snapshots and movies of each of these screens are presented. A city-monitoring exhibition explores the implications of capturing the dynamics of an entire city in real-time by monitoring mobile phones
- The Adaptable Bus Stop: The city of Zaragoza, Spain partnered with the SENSEable City Lab at MIT to design an interactive bus stop. A digital touch-sensitive video screen features Trip planning, Community Message Board, WiFi, Location Enhanced Services and an interface to a mobile device.
- Digital Elevation Models: Using software algorithms derived from image processing it is possible to develop efficient methods of measuring geometric parameters and assessing radiation exchange, energy consumption, wind porosity, etc. Results are extremely fast and accurate; due to the increasing availability of DEMs from lidar.
- History Unwired: A walking tour through one of Venice’s more hidden neighborhoods, delivered over location-aware, multimedia phones and PDAs. The content is a first-ever mix of mobile video, animation, audio, and installation art for the tourism sector.
Digital Life, a Media Lab consortium operating in collaboration with industry, investigates new communications applications enabled by wireless networks. 10X considers technologies that can improve human activity by an order of magnitude. Common-sense Computing explores the capacity of computers to understand and reason about the world as intimately as people do.
Websites that explore related themes include; Interactive Architecture, Eyebeam, Rhizome, WeMakeMoneyNotArt, Artbots, Coin-operated, Cockeyed, Free103Point9, Digital Communities, Directions, Telematicsjournal, GoogleMapsMania, Lego Mindstorms, PortlandPublicArt, Urban Tapestries, Wireless Art,and Wisdom of the Elders.
Related DailyWireless articles include; Mobile 2.0, Motorola: It’s All About ME, Pango Active RFID Tracking Wireless Parking School Bus Tracking Cisco Digital Signage ShoZu Streamcast Ads, Photostories, BBDO Mobilizes Ads, Citizen Journalism from Yahoo & Reuters, NintendoDS Wireless MIDI Controller, PSP Hotspots, Scanners 3D, Big Screen Community Network, Portland MetroFi + Microsoft Ads, Traffic Hotline, Widgets Live, Location-based Messaging via Loki, Municipal Wireless Flash Applications, WiFi Fingerprinting, Remote Ocean Viewer, Audio Book Sharing, Midnight in the Garden, The Semantic Web, The Vision Project, and City Clouds: Becoming The World Cup.
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