Testimony of Dr. Greg Pottie

Pervasive Computing Overview (PPT)

 

Greg Pottie
Deputy Director, Center for Embedded Networked Sensing

http://cens.ucla.edu/

Professor, UCLA Electrical Engineering Department
Associate Dean, Research and Physical Resources, HSSEAS

Center for Embedded Networked Sensing
$40Mill/10 years base funding from NSF


Embedded Networked Sensing (ENS):
A Transforming Technology

 

  • Imagine if
  • High-rise buildings in Los Angeles were able to detect their own structural faults (e.g., weld cracks or plumbing infrastructure)
  • Belmont school could reliably measure toxic levels at very low concentrations, and trace contaminant transport back to its source
  • Buoys along the coast could alert surfers, swimmers, and fisherman to dangerous bacterial levels
  • An earthquake-rubbled building could be infiltrated with robots and sensors to locate signs of life and evaluate structural damage
  • We could infuse complex and endangered ecosystems with a plethora of chemical, physical, acoustic, and image sensors to track global change parameters continuously.
  • Dangerous bacterial and contaminant levels could be detected "on the farm" through dense sampling, instead of "in the market" through sparse sampling
Embedded Networked Sensing Potential

 

  • Embedded Networked Sensing will reveal previously unobservable phenomena
  • Micro-sensors, on-board processing, wireless interfaces feasible at very small scale--can monitor phenomena "up close"
  • Enables spatially and temporally dense environmental monitoring.
Pervasive Computing

 

  • Widely networked computing technology that becomes effectively invisible in the environment
  • Need not be small
  • E.g. Electric motors
  • Computers are everywhere, but most are embedded and at best only locally networked
  • E.g. Automotive control systems
  • Networking produces such increased value as to enable entirely new applications, that were previously too costly to conceive or run on large scales
  • Technological forces:
  • Decreased size and cost of electronics of all kinds
  • Improved networking and database technologies
  • Pervasive proposals: Over 1000 research proposals in response to small NSF program on sensor networks
Privacy and Pervasive Computing

 

  • In a village, everyone knows just about everything about everyone else; in a city, real privacy exists
  • In a networked global village, "everyone" potentially extends to anyone who pays to find out, anywhere in the world, to a level of detail not even available in a village.
  • The only privacy will be that which is explicitly designed in, from the beginning.
  • Regulations become costly after deployment--retrofit of large installed base
  • Patches often have security holes
  • Early regulation, in contrast, will often have little cost, since many design choices in information technology are somewhat arbitrary

RFID and Pervasive Computing

 

  • RFID is one of many technologies that can bind information to an object
  • The binding problem is how to determine that information collected by diverse information sources (sensors/manual data entry) actually applies to the same object or person
  • Electronic tagging is convenient since:
  • Includes unique ID
  • Provides easy means of detection (may even broadcast)
  • Data format is known
  • Other binding technologies: facial recognition algorithms, identity or credit cards (swiped or manual data entry), signature recognition, biometrics, etc.
  • The data management (privacy, security, etc.) issues also apply to these other technologies
  • RFID and cameras have the additional issues of notification of surveillance
Towards Beneficial Pervasive Computing

 

  • Societal values can also be served by new information technologies; imagine:
  • Distributed private networks of environmental monitoring, to measure actual total exposures to contaminants
  • Improved public safety through monitoring of ports, pipelines, and other infrastructure
  • Increased economic efficiencies in supply chain from manufacturing processes through to retail
  • Economic, political and technological forces will make pervasive computing a reality, in an incremental fashion, due to the perceived benefits
  • However, the best societal outcomes will not happen without embedded responsibility in the the information technology
  • This will require study and regulation in partnership with government, consumers, and technology providers