The Center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering (CNSE) held its 7th Annual Industry Conference on May 16 - 17 in Caltech's Beckman Institute Auditorium. This year, the conference was held in conjunction with Caltech's Lee Center for Advanced Networks. The theme of the conference was "Sensor Networks" with faculty from the two centers presenting their research on smart sensors (e.g. Professors Tai, Goodman), wireless networks (e.g. Hajimiri, Rutledge) optical components (Psaltis, Vahala), communications (Effros, McEliece), collective robotics (Goodman, Martinoli), learning in networks (Abu Mostafa) and other topics.

One of the highlights of the conference was the participation of industry panelists and their presentations on how sensor networks operate in various industry sectors such as automotive, defense, aerospace, infrastructure and medical care. Invited presentations from industry and government brought to the audience a view of the opportunities that can be achieved by having a multitude of sensors networked together as well as the challenges of making sense of the data these networks produce.

The audience of over 250 people representing more than 60 companies as well as Caltech faculty and students heard industry executives from companies such as Invensys, IBM, Qualcomm, TRW, Graviton, Sensoria, VivoMetrics, Wingcast and others about the ubiquity of sensor networks coming first in telecommunications and then in other industries. Speakers from DARPA, JPL and NSF indicated that various government programs are also geared towards tying together various sensors creating what will eventually become a sensor web analogous to the computer networks that form the Internet.

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In response to this description of the future, a constant refrain in the audience's questions was how such a sensor web will deal with problems of privacy and security. Although the panelists did not have specific answers, it was evident that industry and government are aware of this question and that a mixture of technical and legislative means will be needed to solve the privacy and security problems.

Another challenge that surfaced was how to prevent total, catastrophic failure when sensors are networked and they tie everything together from home appliances to telephones, computers and traffic signals. The danger of a software glitch bringing life back to a "stone age" was mentioned and the answer seems to be a mixture of redundant sensors, developing logical programming environments (Hickey) and new mathematical tools for assessing complex networks (Doyle).

Industry members in the audience were also interested on how to make better use of the sensor networks that exist today. In the presence of large streams of data, the question is how to extract the maximum information from this data with potential applications that range from condition-based-maintenance (Abu Mostafa) to attention based diagnostics (Koch, Psaltis).

The audience also benefited from discussions with students from both centers. There were approximately 40 posters by students. The conference also brought to the attention of the participants some of the companies that are spin-offs of the CNSE (e.g. Cyrano Sciences), some firms that have collaborative projects with the CNSE (e.g. Irvine Sensors) and some of the sensor-based art installations developed at the Art Center College of Design.

We will continue these conferences and supplement them with shorter, more focused workshops at which the industry-academic exchange will be even more direct and fruitful.

Photo Gallery | Industry Conference Contacts

For questions regarding this conference and future events please contact:

 

Siddharth Dasgupta
Associate Director, CNSE
Mail Code 136-93
Tel: 626-395-2809
Fax: 626-795-4765
sdg@cnse.caltech.edu

last modified: 27 February, 2007