Keynote speakers

From the Ball Field to the Dance Hall - A Decade of Body Sensor Networks in Medicine, Sports, Entertainment, and the Arts

by Joseph Paradiso, Responsive Environments group director at Media Lab

Abstract

This talk will overview a decade of work in wearable embedded sensing by the author and his students in the Responsive Environments Group at the MIT Media Lab. The technical areas that I will touch on include high-bandwidth, wireless multimodal sensor clusters, massively distributed, ultra-low-power" featherweight" sensor nodes, parasitic power scavenging and dynamic power management techniques. The impact of these technologies will be illustrated in several application examples involving human-computer interfaces, ubiquitous computing, controllers for artistic expression and interactive media, biomotion capture, and instrumented social interaction.

Bio

Joseph Paradiso is the Sony Career Development Associate Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at the MIT Media Laboratory, where he directs the Responsive Environments group, which explores how sensor networks augment and mediate human experience, interaction and perception, and co-directed the Things That Think Consortium, a group of industry sponsors and Media Lab researchers who explore the extreme fringe of embedded computation, communication, and sensing. After receiving a BS in Electrical Engineering and Physics summa cum laude from Tufts University in 1977, Paradiso became a K.T. Compton fellow at the Lab for Nuclear Science at MIT, receiving his PhD in physics there in 1981 for research conducted at CERN in Geneva. After two years developing precision drift chambers at the Lab for High Energy Physics at ETH in Zurich, he joined the Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, MA in 1984, where his research encompassed spacecraft control systems, image processing algorithms, underwater sonar, and precision alignment sensors for large high-energy physics detectors.
He joined the Media Lab in 1994, where his current research interests include embedded sensing systems and sensor networks, wearable and body sensor networks, energy harvesting and power management for embedded sensors, ubiquitous and pervasive computing, localization systems, passive and RFID sensor architectures, human-computer interfaces, and interactive media. His honors include the 2000 Discover Magazine Award for Technological Innovation, and he has authored 200 articles and technical reports on topics ranging from computer music to power scavenging.