NSF-CRI'07 Plenary Presentation

June 4, 2007

The Sensorium Research Infrastructure at Boston University

Azer Bestavros and Margrit Betke

Computer Science Department

Boston University

Abstract

The Sensorium infrastructure and associated projects in the CS Department at Boston University aim to catalyze fundamental advances in image and video computing, wireless and sensor network protocols, and real-time resource management techniques to deal with unique spatio-temporal constraints of sensor networks in general and of embedded video sensor networks in particular. The Sensorium infrastructure is composed of a sensor network of video cameras, motes, and wireless radio sniffers, installed in several contiguous rooms and hallways, which are all networked with embedded (in situ) and centralized processing units, with access to a multi-terabyte data store, which are all managed together to satisfy queries, including those generated by users within this environment. In contrast to current sensory systems which are conceived (and built) as special purpose systems with custom-developed architectures, the Sensorium architecture was conceived and acquired by relying on commodity hardware and freely available software, opening up much wider access to sensory systems to the computer science research community.

Note: The CS Department at Boston University will be holding a Research Open House on Monday June 4th and Tuesday June 5th (1pm-4pm) during which graduate students will be available to show off their projects using posters and live demos. All are welcome!