In technical cooperation with the IEEE, IEEE Computer Society, and IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society

ABSTRACT

As processors 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 talk will touch on recent results from several projects at the MIT Media Lab's Responsive Environments Group that explore various embodiments of such dense sensing structures, including high-bandwidth, wireless multimodal sensor clusters, massively distributed, ultra-low-power "featherweight" sensor nodes, and ultra-dense sensor networks as digital "skins". This talk will focus on applications that foster collaborative interaction of different sorts, including large interactive surfaces, passive wireless sensors for collaborative musical interaction with multiple players, low-cost sensors for large-group interaction, and electronic badges that facilitate large meetings and acquire data for analyzing social dynamics. Further information on these topics is linked to our website at: http://www.media.mit.edu/resenv.

BIOGRAPHY

Joseph Paradiso is the Sony Career Development Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Laboratory, where he directs the Responsive Environments group, and co-directs the Things That Think Consortium, a group of industry sponsors and Media Lab researchers who explore the extreme fringe of embedded computation, communication, and sensing. After receiving a BS in Electrical Engineering and Physics summa cum laude from Tufts University in 1977, Paradiso became a K.T. Compton fellow at the Lab for Nuclear Science at MIT, receiving his PhD in physics there in 1981 for research on muon pair production at the Intersecting Storage Rings at CERN in Geneva. After two years of developing precision drift chambers at the Lab for High Energy Physics at ETH in Zurich, he joined the Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, MA in 1984, where his research encompassed spacecraft control systems, image processing algorithms, underwater sonar, and precision alignment sensors for large high-energy physics detectors. He joined the Media Lab in 1994, where his current research interests include sensor systems for human-computer interfaces and ubiquitous computing. His honors include the 2000 Discover Magazine Award for Technological Innovation, and he has authored over 100 articles and technical reports on topics ranging from computer music to energy harvesting.