Intelligent Sensor Technology Shows Way to Safety, Savings
Inventions Set Stage for Smaller, Smarter Devices
BY BRAD GRAVES
Staff Writer
They are called motes, and they tend to chatter quietly among themselves.
I hold one of the radio communication devices, which is a little smaller than a pack of playing cards, in my hand.
Like the studio audience in “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire,” each person in this hotel conference room has a console. They answer a question by pushing one of two buttons.
Tell a mote something and you can be sure it won’t keep it to itself. The device sends my answer to my neighbor’s mote, which acts like a radio repeater and passes it along to the next mote. Eventually the information reaches a main computer, which tabulates the audience’s answers.
Motes are industrious. No one tells them how to relay the answers. They have the talent to organize themselves into networks.
Even reorganize.
If one unit conks out, or if a new unit comes into range, the devices rearrange the communication paths to include all.
“You want the network to be able to rebuild itself periodically,” says Larry Goldstein, an executive with Graviton, a San Diego company working to commercialize such technology.
The electronics of this little unit are one of several technologies that are aligning to make intelligent sensor networks a reality.
UCSD Connect convened a conference on intelligent sensor technology last week at the Hilton Torrey Pines. Many used the venue to speak of inventions that are several years away.
Things to Come
Here is one look at the future that emerged:
Sensors, measuring everything from temperature to vibration to the presence of deadly toxins, are expected to get smaller.
Sensors should also drop in price.
Once they become inexpensive, corporations, governments and the military are expected to deploy them in large numbers to monitor things from industrial processes to battlefield conditions. Data gathered can help users save money or evaluate hazards.
A single sensor has some value, Goldstein says, but they have more value in a network.
Engineers will couple sensors to miniature processors and radio transceivers.
The man who introduced the motes to the audience, scientist Jim Wilson from Intel Corp.’s San Diego office, says the size of these electronics will decrease to that of a coin and go even smaller. Someday they could reach the size of the dot next to the numeral at the top of this newspaper page.
Increasingly, the tiny sensor-radios are expected to send their data over wireless telecommunications networks into computers.
Legions of sensors are expected to generate reams of data. The amount has the potential to be overwhelming.
Panelist Peter Fuhr of San Jose State University spoke of a hydroelectric dam in New England that was covered with underwater sensors as an experiment. He said when an earthquake hit the region April 20, the agency overseeing the dam wanted a full account of sensor readings to gauge the dam’s condition.
This wasn’t exactly what the client wanted, Fuhr said. All the data would have filled 600 compact disks. What the client wanted was an interpretation of that data.
With so much data spilling out of the sensor networks, conference speakers agreed the business opportunities to all this will come from combing through such data to find trends.
Computer programs will do that.
Such business opportunities may be three to five years in the future, said Fred Cutler, executive director for UCSD Connect.
Though these technologies are in early stages, local companies are already building businesses around them.
San Diego-based Xsilogy, Inc. helps customers monitor conditions at industrial sites.
For example, a Xsilogy radio frequency sensor system keeps track of temperatures and cooling tower water quality in Xerox Corp.’s Rochester, N.Y., factory.
Xsilogy, founded in 1998, has 28 employees. 2002 is the first year the company has a complete product line, said Rick Kriss, the company’s founder and CEO, estimating sales will top $3 million this year.
Two important stockholders are other corporations. One is Ondeo Nalco, a subsidiary of the French company Suez, that specializes in chemicals for water treatment. The other is George Fischer Corp., a Swiss company that makes sensors.
Such partnerships were essential for getting Xsilogy off the ground, said Kriss.
Today Xsilogy’s customers include Alcoa, Boeing, Exxon Mobil, Frito Lay, General Mills, Procter & Gamble and Union Pacific.
A wireless sensor network engineered by Graviton is measuring temperature and power consumption at Bayport, N.Y.-headquartered Wenner Bread Products, Inc.
Graviton, founded in 1999, has 97 employees. Most are engineers. The company does not disclose its sales figures.
Its D round of venture funding raised $35 million. Investors include Qualcomm Inc., Sun Microsystems and Siemens. In-Q-Tel, the venture arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, has also invested in Graviton.
Developing the Technology
Graviton executives talk up the potential of their product. They say electric utilities could use wireless sensors to monitor the health of tens of thousands of transformers in the field. Hospitals and phone companies could use them to monitor the charges in their backup batteries. Both applications would tell company officials when equipment is close to failure.
Generally companies will buy such services if they can pay for themselves within one year, said executives with both Graviton and Xsilogy.
Several challenges come with the development of these technologies.
Not least of these is power. Like cell phones, sensors require batteries. Transmission saps their power, noted Darrel Drinan, whose San Diego-based company, PhiloMetron, is developing a sensor-equipped bandage for monitoring vital signs or other aspects of a person’s health.
While technology coming out of university or government labs may look intriguing, Graviton’s Goldstein cautions it may not yet be stable or robust enough to work in the real world.
Still, that didn’t prevent speakers at the Connect conference from exploring possibilities.
Some thinkers predict biological sensors planted in people’s bodies measuring things such as metabolism, said Larry Smarr, director of the UCSD-based California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology.
UC Berkeley engineers, meanwhile, are working to create a flying sensor the size of a large beetle.
Smarr asked his audience to imagine a 1-inch-long version of the Predator, the unmanned spy aircraft from General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. that is making headlines from Afghanistan.
Smarr sensed minds at work in the audience.
“How many of you,” he asked, “are thinking of business plans for these?”
