David H. Koizumi

Making Sensor Networks Practical with Robots

While wireless sensor networks offer new capabilities, there are a number of issues that hinder their deployment in practice. We argue that robotics can solve or greatly reduce the impact of many of these issues. Our hypothesis has been tested in the context of an autonomous system to care for houseplants that we have deployed in our office environment. This paper describes what we believe is needed to make sensor networks practical, the role robots can play in accomplishing this, and the results we have obtained in developing our application.

PlantCare: An Investigation in Practical Ubiquitous Systems

Ubiquitous computing is finally becoming a reality. However, there are many practical issues that stand in the way of mass acceptance. We have been investigating these practical concerns within the context of an autonomous application that takes care of houseplants using a sensor network and a mobile robot. We believe that emphasizing autonomy and thereby minimizing demands on users will help us address the many practical concerns that will arise not only in PlantCare but also in many other ubiquitous applications. In this paper, we discuss the technical challenges that we have encountered while trying to make PlantCare a reality and report on our experience in addressing these challenges.

Boundary layer microphone

A microphone may use boundary layer technology in concert with a concave reflector to produce improved sensitivity. The concave reflector may be arranged with respect to a boundary layer creating surface such that the sound waves are concentrated at the boundary layer creating surface. Thus, an intense compression layer is formed proximate to the boundary layer creating surface. A transducer may arranged in opposition to the boundary layer creating surface to convert the boundary layer energy into an electrical signal.