Center for Embedded Network Sensing

Rapidly growing stress on the natural environment has created an urgent demand for new environmental exploration systems that operate remotely and autonomously. As sensor networks are applied to these critical environmental monitoring problems, a series of new requirements have emerged for extensive characterization of dynamic phenomena in three-dimensional environments. The unpredictable presence of obstacles to sensing and the inherent temporal evolution of events create limitations for optimal deployment of sensors in the environment. Networked Infomechanical Systems (NIMS) technology has been developed to introduce precise and sustainable actuation for distributed sensing. NIMS devices are suspended on cable infrastructure to provide a combination of broad range motion combined with accurate localization.