Smart environments. (sensors).(Viktoria Institute's Smart-Its miniature context-aware computers )(Brief Article)

The promise of ubiquitous computing--of a world filled with intelligent objects that react to their environments to better serve human needs--has been hindered by a lack of enabling technologies. Indeed, the sensors, computers, and communications devices required to achieve this vision have been too large, too costly, and too difficult to program to be embedded effectively in everyday items.

Now, a research team led by Lars Erik Holmquist at the Viktoria Institute's Future Applications Lab in Goteborg, Sweden, has developed miniature, context-aware computers called Smart-Its to overcome these shortcomings. The devices, which will be on display at the Emerging Technologies exhibit at SIGGRAPH 2003, can be implanted in common objects to augment them with sensing, computation, and communications capabilities. To illustrate the concept's potential, the researchers win demonstrate ...