In the not-too-distant future wireless sensors will become part of people’s lives, helping them turn on lights, turn on the coffee machine at home when they are in the office, or even monitor the bio-stats of loved ones remotely, a group of scientists sponsored by the National Science Council said yesterday.
“Over a three-year Wireless Sensor Network [WSN] Technology Research and Development Program, the council sponsored eight teams of scientists that worked independently from each other, but are coordinated from a central office,” the council’s Department of Engineering and Applied Sciences director Tsai Ming-chi (蔡明祺) said.
The teams were responsible for the development of WSN applications in areas including home appliances, medical devices and safety detectors for public construction projects, Tsai said.
Coordination office director Lu Hsueh-shi (呂學士) said WSN was expected to be a US$600 million industry by 2012, adding that with mature and advanced chip design technology, Taiwan was at an advantage in WSN research and development.
“We have strong chip design technologies as well as good application development teams. What we need is a systematic communication platform so that all wireless sensor chips can be networked,” Lu said.
Now in its third year, the project has led to the development of products that globally position people in rooms so that light fixtures, coffee machines, TV sets or telephones can be turned on or off depending on a user’s position, Lu said.
Digital and wireless detectors used to monitor the structural integrity of buildings and phenomena like earthquakes have also been developed, Lu said, adding that one team had developed a medical tracking system that allows the bio-stats of sick or elderly people to be monitored wirelessly.
One of the goals of the program is to make WSN nodes inexpensive “so that everyone can afford them and they can be used in everyday life,” Tsai said.
“While WSN nodes made in the US cost about NT$8,000 each, ours cost NT$800. Our next goal is to make them for NT$80. This is a goal that can only be realized with help from the business sector,” he said.
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