Joseph A. Paradiso

Abstract

As microelectronics have escalated in capability via Moore’s Law, electronic sensors have similarly advanced. Rather than dedicate a small number of sensors to hardwired designs that expressly measure parameters of interest, we can begin to envision a near future with sensors as commodity where dense, multimodal sensing is the rule rather than the exception, and where features relevant to many applications are dynamically extracted from a rich data stream. This article surveys a series of projects at the MIT Media Lab’s Responsive Environments Group that explore various embodiments of such agile sensing structures, including high-bandwidth, wireless multimodal sensor clusters, massively distributed, ultra-low-power "featherweight" sensor nodes, and extremely dense sensor networks as digital "skins". This paper also touches on other examples involving gesture sensing for large interactive surfaces and interactive media, plus overviews projects in parasitic power harvesting.