The sensor web is the logical conclusion of Augmented Life. An augmented reality blending of virtual and physical worlds into a single reality, made possible by a web of ever-present, internetworked sensors, and embedded technologies. The first suspicions of this web now exist, with RFID, and wireless communications.
Sections
A web of sensors, of GPS, RFID, everything, all interlinked, all tracking and bearing down, this is the future we can look forward to, as augmented reality comes closer to being.
Future of fashion
A detailed look atthe duality of appearance likely in the near future, where we may appear one way in the physical world, and have a whole range of digital appearances in the augmented reality and virtual environment worlds.
New Augmented Reality Position Tech: Beginning to blend?
 Industry news, originally posted 03/02/2005, deemed too important to allow to fade. A new real-time rendering system, blending physical and virtual realities together in real-time, is for the first time able to analyse physical reality, and place virtual objects to seamlessly interact, in real-time.
Pieces of the Sensor Web > AMPERE
 AMPERE is one of the many dedicated networks necessary to protect and grow a fledgeling sensor web. Looking down from space, 66 satellites monitor the Earth's electromagnetic field - and watch for spikes.
Projector lights radio tags
Industry news, originally posted 11-08-2004, deemed too important to allow to fade. RFID tags, all the rage it seems these days. However, they could be more than they seem to be. They could in fact be the key to the sensor network necessary for augmented reality to truly come to be.
RFID: Beginnings of the sensor web?
RFID – Radio Frequency Identification. These small tags are starting to drift everywhere. Powered by the radio field the reader sends out when it scans for a tag, these tiny, primitive devices may actually be heralds of the sensor web.
Sensor Web Begins to Form: 2008
This year, the focus is on pervading social tagging, and upsurge in GPS devices and wearable computing. In addition, of course, the devices on offer are in almost all cases, a decisive improvement on the status of various technologies on offer this time last year.
Sensor Web: A look at an Internet in Physical Space: AR Orientation
The Sensor web, is a long-anticipated faced of an augmented world. It is, in theory at least, a huge web of interconnected sensors, actuators, RFID, GPS, specialised routing controls, and augmented sensory hardware, all wired together into an immense web in physical space, facilitating Augmented Reality applications.
Stratellites
 To increase transmission speed (decreasing transmission delay) beyond that of low earth orbit, a different paradigm is required. A type of satellite which can survive in high atmosphere.
Virtual Manniquin - You!
Industry news, originally posted 02-02-2004, deemed too important to allow to fade. Tired of battling with wardrobe accessories in crampt changing rooms? Fed up of trying oh-so-carefully not to damage items whilst your body does its best to get in the way, and the stall is falling apart around you?
VR may have a solution, in the form of a system developed by Toshiba. The company is developing a 3D, realtime system uses video cameras to create a virtual copy of your body on a screen, and not only moves with you, just as a mirror would, but also tries on clothes, without you having to.
The system is still at an early stage, but it could in use in stores within three years.
Connected on the Move (5)
One of the cornerstones of a sensor web is the ability to stay connected to the internet on the move, wherever you are, without even realising as your signal is tracked constantly. Whilst we are still a long way from this, we are making strides.
Connected cars
An article from the BBC on the coming convergence of smart grid computing and augmented reality for motoring - cars that know what is ahead and react to changing conditions.
Local Area Augmentation Systems
 A Local area Augmentation System is used to augment Global Positioning Systems when fine, precise detail is required. They could actually solve a lot more sensor web issues than just the use in aeronautics they have today.
Wi-fi? Why worry?
In the wake of an increasing number of scare stories about the use of Wi-Fi, claiming they alter the brain, and should be banned from schools and public areas, this article from the BBC looks at the actual science - which shows them as safe - a thousand computer wi-fi network puts out less than a single mobile phone.
Back To TopConnectivity for Everyone (9)
We are rapidly approaching the existence of an ever-present, ever-connected sensor web on some parts of the planet. Other parts, especially in the developing world, are not nearly so lucky. What can be done or is being done, to bring the interconnecting information web to these places?
Q&A: Internet Protocol TV
What is IPTV? How does it benefit people? Bidding farewell to the days of mass entertainment being passive, as opposed to interactive, this FAQ attempts to explain to the layperson, a few home truths about the technology.
A Sensor Web of Hearing Aids
At the start of April 2009, a US firm, Oticon, started shipping a rather interesting concept, essentially hearing aids that plug into the local wireless network as you walk around. Whilst this company may be the first, it's a definite interest area for others.
Connecting villages with drive-by Wi-Fi
In the poorest countries, in the remotest locations, a physical web connection is pretty much an impossibility. Even the richest nations would pause and consider before laying cable through hundreds of miles of untamed wilderness, and poor nations simply do not have the resources for radio mast relays. Never the less, it is possible to bring the internet, or something fairly similar, to the most remote nomadic village in outer Mongolia.
Increasing Access to Public Augmented Reality Units: The Human beast Problem
 The human element is the main stopping point for augmented reality technologies. Humans are not really that civilised in general. Civilisation is imposed on most, by society. Taken out of society's constraints, or drunk, or high, or simply angry, the average street passer-by becomes in essence, a wild animal. They are going to break things, whatever they can grasp.
One Laptop Per Child
The One Laptop Per Child project is aiming to give every child on the planet, access to at least basic computing resources, to educate and improve the quality of life, even in the most remote, underdeveloped areas.
Raw Speed
The raw speed communication is possible at on the internet is a linchpin of VR for social use. As the immersion level deepens, and more and more bodily senses are incorporated into the simulation, the demand for high speed data transfer escalates. This report looks at some of the recent attempts to squeeze faster and faster data transference from the internet infrastructure.
The Bandwidth to Feel
Using the current approach to data transfer the Internet is built on, full VR would never be possible. Just too many thousands of packets for different senses, all moving at once. You would literally come apart at the seams. Thankfully, there is another approach; Internet 2.
The book is based round the concept of the network is not the great equaliser, an egalitarian construct that has, since the Internet became a powerful social force, begun to spread out into all works of life, with network-centric organisation. Instead, the authors state that the exploit – a direct reference to the hacker term – is a common corporate and subversive means of taking quiet control of the flow and direction of networks.
WI-MAX Promises to Transform America’s Internet
Several of the larger technology companies, including Google, are joining together for the Clearwire project; an effort to develop a nation-wide Wi-MAX network intended to render cable or phone line Internet obsolete and set the stage for free Google net access supported by advertising alone.
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In a world with a ubiquitous web of interconnected sensors, it can become much easier to keep an eye on the physical locations of other people.
GPS Tracker To Keep Pupils Safe
After the events at Virginia Tech University in the US, in April, a major push at using wearable technologies and sensor webs to improve student safety has been underway.
China's All-Seeing Eye: Sensor Web of Surveilance
China is building a high-tech police state under a massive surveillance and censorship program: "Golden Shield," linking surveillance cameras, the Internet, phones, facial-recognition software, voice recognition data from phone calls, GPS monitoring, and facial photos into a centralized database for every person in China - 1.3 billion faces.
When Augmented Security Goes Pear Shaped
It has been revealed that a biometric pattern recognition system in use at Japan's airports has been bypassed for an unknown amount of time, effectively rendering it worthless, and raising questions about the reliance on technology as a 'watertight' security measure.
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Ubiquitous sensors, processors, and data storage devices all interconnected and aware of the environment around them. These are life-changing enough on their own, but when combined with otherwise inanimate objects, they give the objects the ability for intelligent behaviour, by 'talking' for themselves.
Connected cars
An article from the BBC on the coming convergence of smart grid computing and augmented reality for motoring - cars that know what is ahead and react to changing conditions.
Computerised Dustbins
From mid 2006, UK councils up and down the country, have been embarking on a new project - creating a sensor web out of dustbins.
Google PowerMeter as a Sensor Web
 Smart meters are all the rage in North America, where they are hooked to the building's power supply, next to the fuse box, ans they keep a live check on how much power the house is consuming, with statistical reporting available for energy consumption over time.
Podcast: John La Grou plugs smart power outlets
 This podcast comes from TED 2009, where electronics inventor John La Grou shows off the capabilities of a sensor web of smart power outlets in every home, where the outlet knows what is plugged into it, and how much power the device is consuming, and when it consumes it.
Probabilistic robotics is a new and growing area in robotics, concerned with perception and control in the face of uncertainty. Building on the field of mathematical statistics, probabilistic robotics endows robots with a new level of robustness in real-world situations.
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Linking Smartphones to form a Data Web
One of the critical foundations of the sensor web, is creating the capacity for different devices, made by different companies and on different networks, to work together as a seamless whole. Traditionally of course that has not been possible, but new software, developed by researchers at Imperial College London, and intended to help other academics, is starting to do just that.
This book is basically a mixture of electronics guide and augmented reality bible. Not so much about the visual aspects, but about the ubiquitous computing platform, intelligent objects and sensor web.
Wireless Spectrum Sharing
We are finally coming to the end of days in which spectrum frequencies are parcelled out to allocated bandwidths for different services. This has been impractical for some time now, as older services have had larger frequency ranges, leaving newer services squeezed together into increasingly smaller spaces.
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