A miniature electronic nose (ENose) has been designed and built at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA, and was designed to detect, identify, and quantify ten common contaminants and relative humidity changes. The sensing array includes 32 sensing films made from polymer carbon-black composites. Event identification and quantification were done using the Levenberg-Marquart nonlinear least squares method. After successful ground training, this ENose was used in a demonstration experiment aboard STS-95 (October-November, 1998), in which the ENose was operated continuously for six days and recorded the sensors' response to the air in the mid-deck. Air samples were collected daily and analyzed independently after the flight. Changes in shuttle-cabin humidity were detected and quantified by the JPL ENose; neither the ENose nor the air samples detected any of the contaminants on the target list. The device is microgravity insensitive.
Measuring environmental variables at appropriate temporal and spatial scales remains an important challenge in ecological research. New developments in wireless sensors and sensor networks will free ecologists from a wired world and revolutionize our ability to study ecological systems at relevant scales. In addition, sensor networks can analyze and manipulate the data they collect, thereby moving data processing from the end user to the sensor network itself. Such embedded processing will allow sensor networks to perform data analysis procedures, identify outlier data, alter sampling regimes, and ultimately control experimental infrastructure. We illustrate this capability using a wireless sensor network, the Sensor Web, in a study of microclimate variation under shrubs in the Chihuahuan Desert. Using Sensor Web data, we propose simple analytical protocols for assessing data quality “on‐the‐fly” that can be programmed into sensor networks. The ecological community can influence the evolution of environmental sensor networks by working across disciplines to infuse new ideas into sensor network development.
The confluence of the rapidly expanding sensor, computation, and telecommunication industries has allowed for a new instrument concept: the Sensor Web. A Sensor Web consists of intra-communicating, spatially-distributed sensor pods that are deployed to monitor and explore environments. It is capable of automated reasoning for it can perform intelligent autonomous operations in uncertain environments, respond to changing environmental conditions, and carry out automated diagnosis and recovery. Sensor Webs could have as much an impact on the uses of sensors as the Internet did on the uses of computers.Sensor Webs are often confused with "distributed sensors" or "sensor networks". The unique feature of the Sensor Web is that information gathered by one pod is shared and used by other pods. In contrast, sensor networks merely gather data and information gathered by a particular pod on such a network does not influence the behavior of another pod. Thus, sensor networks collect data while Sensor Webs can react and modify their behavior on the basis of the collected data. This paper will outline the potential of the Sensor Web concept and describe the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Sensor Webs Project (http://sensorwebs.jpl.nasa.gov/). In particular, a prototype Sensor Web deployed at the Huntington Botanical Gardens will be discussed.
In 1997, the Sensor Web was conceived at the NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)to take advantage of the increasingly inexpensive, yet sophisticated, mass consumer-marketchips for the computer and telecommunication industries and use them to create platforms thatshare information among themselves and act in concert as a single instrument. This instrumentwould be embedded into an environment to monitor and even control it. The Sensor Web’spurpose is to extract knowledge from the data it collects and use this information to intelligentlyreact and adapt to its surroundings. It links a remote end-user's cognizance with the observedenvironment. Here, we examine not only current progress in the Sensor Web technology, butalso its recent application to problems in hydrology to illustrate the general concepts involved
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