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Embedded sensors are touching every phase of our lives as they diffuse into the objects and environments around us. We'll exhibit a "phase change" within a few years, however, once this sensor information becomes networked and available to applications running outside of each device's domain that will be at least as profound as the web was to computers. Accordingly, this talk will overview the broad theme of interfacing humans to the ubiquitous electronic "nervous system" that sensor networks will soon extend across things, places, and people. I'll illustrate this through two avenues of research - one looking at a new kind of digital "omniscience" (e.g., building different kinds of browsers for sensor network data) and the other looking at buildings & tools as "prosthetic" extensions of humans (e.g., making HVAC systems an extension of your sense of comfort), drawing from many projects that are running in my group at the MIT Media Lab.
Joseph Paradiso is an Associate Professor at the MIT Media Laboratory, where he directs the Responsive Environments group, which explores how sensor networks augment and mediate human experience, interaction and perception. He received his PhD in Physics from MIT in 1981 and a BSEE from Tufts University in 1977. After two years developing precision drift chambers at the Lab for High Energy Physics at ETH in Zurich, he joined the Draper Laboratory 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 embedded sensing systems and sensor networks, wearable and body sensor networks, energy harvesting and power management for embedded sensors, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, localization systems, passive sensor architectures, human-computer interfaces, & interactive media.