In 1999 the Personal Information Architecture Group began a three-year research thrust to develop and field test networked embedded sensor packs (ESP's) for critical applications including human vital sign monitoring, advanced environment sensing, and object tracking. An ESP must be able to be built rapidly, with 'snap together' sensors and software. An ESP may consist of tens of hundreds of componenets on (or in) the body to make a person's vital signs transparently available over a wireless network. Or, it could be a small 'black box' probe that relays envirnmental information or other intelligence via LEO satellites to a distant receiver.

We have four specific goals:

1)	ESP kits: We are developing robust hardware/software kits for rapidly creating and deploying embedded miniature sensor/actuator packages.
2)	Sensor Glue: A suite of software technologies including a standardized sensor/actuator protocol, mobile agents for managing distributed networks of sensors , and a set of standard software components for easy (automatic) assimilation of sensors in a network.
3)	Internet Capillaries: Development of novel wired and wireless self-organizing networks.
4)	Ambitious Field Tests: With an emphasis on vital tracking of people, mobile objects, and continuous environmental sensing, we take our projects into the field under extreme conditions.

A whitepaper on ESP goals fom Fall 1999