Gibbons SenSys08 Keynote

Hang on for the Ride:
The Thrills and Spills of

Sensornet Research
Phillip B. Gibbons
Intel Research Pittsburgh
November 5, 2008
Outline
y Musings on the Thrills & Spills of

sensornet research
y Peak at our lab’s sensing related

research
2 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

Sensornet Research: Thrills!
y Many Thrills in Past Decade
– Exploded as a new, exciting, important area
– New playground, Intellectually challenging,
Hands on, Interdisciplinary
– Burst of new conferences; Papers in old conferences
Remarkable
progress
Open new windows

on the world
How many conferences have published a paper

with “sensor network” in title? 302
Sensornet Research: Spills?
y Many false starts

y Many lessons learned
– E.g., in SenSys’08, see Barrenetxea et al.,
The Hitchhiker's Guide to Successful
Wireless Sensor Network Deployments
y Big question: What’s next?

– Is the thrill gone?
– Sensornets now commercialized
– What are the big open problems?

Where Do We Go From Here?
y Expanding our sights

– Field of View
WSN
– Time Horizon
core
Expanding scope
Will talk about each in turn

What is a Sensor Network?
y Tiny sensor nodes with very limited processing power,
memory, battery. Scalar sensors (e.g., temperature)
y Closely co-located, communicating via an ad hoc

low-bandwidth wireless network
y Singly tasked
Microservers? not so tiny, PDA-class processor
Fault-line monitoring? wide-area, not ad hoc
Broadband? not low-bandwidth
Webcams? not scalar, can be multi-tasked
Tanker/Fab monitoring? powered, wired
6 Slide
Phillipfrom IrisNet
B. Gibbons, talks
SenSys’08 ~2005
keynote
Sensor Networks is a Rich Space
y Characteristics of sensor network

depend on
– Requirements of the application
– Restrictions on the deployment
y Characteristics of sensed data

– Sampling the real world
– Tied to particular place and time CENS’ NIMS
– Not all data equally interesting James Reserve

SenSys Scope has been Expanding
y Cameras, Mobile phones, etc
y From the SenSys’09 draft CFP:
SenSys takes a broad view of embedded

networked sensor systems to include
any distributed systems that collectively

interact with the physical world
Note: No mention of “low power”, “wireless”, etc.

But What are the Boundaries?
y Sensing + Actuation + Mobility
– Robotics?
WSN
y Distributed Smart Cameras core
– Computer Vision?
y Etc
Thrilling Opportunity ?
or
Self-inflicted Identity Theft ?
Discussion topic among the SenSys Steering Committee
Embracing the Broadening
y E.g., More interaction with Robotics

– SenSys workshop on Sensor-Robotic systems (?)
Tues lunch conversation

Where Do We Go From Here? (2)
y Expanding our sights: Time horizons
Impact of Sensor Network Commercialization
Academic research must be more forward looking,

to stay ahead of commercial offerings
Often, research goes beyond

what can be demonstrated
on today’s technology

SenSys’07
Soap Box Talk
“A Tale of a Hypothetical SenSys Submission”
(Challenges of Publishing More Forward-Looking Work,
using Claytronics as a fictional example)
Key ingredients of a solid systems paper:

• Important problem
• Effective design: addresses core challenges, novel
• Solid evaluation: realistic, answers key questions,
fair comparison with previous work
Beyond what can be demonstrated on today’s

technology => Many aspects are open to dispute
SenSys’07
Soap Box Talk
“A Tale of a Hypothetical SenSys Submission”
(Challenges of Publishing More Forward-Looking Work,
using Claytronics as a fictional example)

Spills:core challenges, novel
• Effective design: addresses
Authors
fair often
comparison
get it with previous work
wrong
Beyond what can be demonstrated on today’s
technology => Many aspects are open to dispute
A System Research “Formula”
y Imagine a plausible future
y Create an approximation of that vision
using technology that exists
y Discover what is True in that world
– Empirical experience: Bashing your head, stubbing
your toe, rubbing your nose in it
– Quantitative measurement and analysis
– Analytics and Foundations
“Bold, concise, revolutionary goals

to shoot for are invaluable”
[David Culler’s SenSys’07 Soap Box]

Outline
sensornet research
y Peak at IRP’s sensing related research

–Everyday Sensing & Perception (ESP)
– Personal Robotics
– SLIPstream
– Hi-Spade: Flash
– Claytronics

Everyday Sensing & Perception
Build a context recognition system that
is 90% accurate over 90% of your day
Environmental Activity
Coord. location (lat,lon) Object-based drawing
Symbolic location in a car Kinematic running
Surroundings low crime High-level vacationing
Social Cognitive
ID: you and others nearby Emotional angry
Type of interaction work Goal finish taxes
Current role teacher Temporal rushing
16 Philipose etPhillip
al, B.IRGibbons,
Seattle, IR keynote
SenSys’08 Pittsburgh, etc
ESP Application Structure
Applications Digital valet Life coach
Adaptive Low attention Interaction
Interaction interfaces interfaces planning Haptics
Activity from objects

plantcare activity
point
Learning & plantfood
object gesture Location from objects
inference
Carry inference
SVMobject SVMgesture
Feature edge color SIFT FFT energy

extraction
video
Sensing
accelerometer

Digital Valet
Pedestrian navigation Real time energy awareness

Location-based security Smart appliances
Finding lost & hidden objects Entertainment integration
Fitness tracking In-situ recommender systems
Smart scrap booking Personal health monitoring
Virtual tour guide Smart shopping assistant
Home automation Social networking
Context-aware interruptions Context-aware filtering
Pre-destination/route prediction Home security monitoring
Research Problems
• Achieve high quality perception
– How can we get accuracy, variety, detail & coverage
simultaneously?
– How do we retain acceptable performance?
• Lower the human cost of getting & using context

– How can we enable non-ML-PhDs to build context recognizers?
– How can we be minimally intrusive, both in privacy and
overhead?
• Establish the value of high-volume context data

to consumers
– Which contexts matter most in everyday settings?
– How will applications, interfaces and interaction techniques be
optimized to leverage context?
19

Activity from Objects: Egocentric
Touching is Doing camera
“water”
“having
“mustard”
a meal”
“pepper”
• Highly constrained object recognition problem

• Pose, scale, clutter, occlusion
• ~75% recognition across 15 objs on real data
Why Intel is Interested
Far more $$$ in services than silicon
Context-aware interfaces,
Revenue above silicon for mobility, health and Services & device
home from users & advertisers (e.g. LBS , adaptation
assisted living, ‘who’s in front of the TV, etc.)
Perception SW layer that plays well Fast, efficient

with Multicore Graphics + Physics layer inference & perception
Key platform differentiator

Platform integration
Embedded sensors provide stickiness, platform
of sensors
differentiation and Avg Selling Price uplift
Always-on/connected
mobile platforms
Always-on with power efficiency
Context inference is key next-generation capability

21
Positions Intel Phillip
platforms for next gen apps/services
B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote
Personal Robotics
Goal: Useful robotic assistants for
indoor, populated environments
Short-range sensing & perception:
Custom electric field sensors in fingers
Mid-range perception & manipulation:

The robotic barkeep
22 Srinivasa etPhillip
al,B.IR Pittsburgh,
Gibbons, IR Seattle, CMU
SenSys’08 keynote
SLIPstream
Goal: Scalable Low-latency Interactive
Perception on video Streams
• Treat video & templates as spatio-temporal volumes
• Analyze using volumetric shape
& motion consistency features
• Parallelized implementation on shared cluster
Natural gesture
user interfaces Gestris
23 Sukthankar
Phillip B.et al, IR
Gibbons, Pittsburgh,
SenSys’08 keynote CMU
Outline
sensornet research

– ESP
– SLIPstream
–Hi-Spade: Flash
– Claytronics

Flash Superior to Magnetic Disk
on Many Metrics
• Energy-efficient • Lighter
• Smaller • More durable
• Higher throughput
• Less cooling cost
NAND Flash Chip Properties
Block (64‐128 pages) Page (512‐2048 B)
Read/write pages,
… … erase blocks
• Write page once after a block is erased
In-place update

Read/write pages,
In-place update
1. Copy 2. Erase

Read/write pages,
In-place update
1. Copy 2. Erase 3. Write

Read/write pages,
In-place update
1. Copy 2. Erase 3. Write 4. Copy

Read/write pages,
In-place update
1. Copy 2. Erase 3. Write 4. Copy 5. Erase

Random
• Expensive operations:
Sequential
Sequential
Random
• In‐place updates
• Random writes 0.4ms 0.6ms 0.4ms 127ms
Read Write
Hi-Spade
Goal for Flash: Algorithms that avoid

random writes & in-place updates
Our main result:

A subclass of “semi-random” writes
are both fast & useful in many algorithms
[Nath, Gibbons, VLDB’08]

Semi-random Access Pattern
y Select pages within a block sequentially
– May jump around across blocks

1 2

3 1 2

3 14 2

378 146 2 5

378 1 4 6 12 2 11 5 9 10
Random
Se
Se
mi
mi
‐ra Applies to
‐ra
Se
Se
Ra
nd
nd
qu
qu
nd
o flash chips,
o
en
en
om
m
m
tia
tia
flash cards,
l
l
0.4ms 0.5ms 0.6ms 0.4ms 0.5ms 127ms and SSDs

Read Write

Example Application
y Maintain on flash a large (several GBs),
bounded size random sample of a stream of
data items
Query
Local archiving of sensor data

Existing Sampling Algorithms
y Memory: Reservoir Sampling [Vitter’85]
Accept with
prob |R|/i
i’th item
Reservoir R
• Disk: Geometric File [Jermaine’04]
Not Flash‐Friendly:
Random writes, in‐place updates
Existing Sampling Algorithms
y Memory: Reservoir Sampling [Vitter’85]
Overwrite Accept with

random item prob |R|/i
i’th item
Reservoir R
• Disk: Geometric File [Jermaine’04]
Not Flash‐Friendly:
Random writes, in‐place updates
Flash-friendly Sampling Algorithm
1. Assign random
“levels” to items and
put them in buckets
Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 …

Storage limit: 25
Semi‐random writes, No in‐place updates
1. Assign random
put them in buckets

Storage limit: 25
1. Assign random
put them in buckets

Storage limit: 25
1. Assign random
put them in buckets

Storage limit: 25
1. Assign random
put them in buckets

Storage limit: 25
1. Assign random
… “levels” to items and

put them in buckets

Storage limit: 25
1. Assign random
put them in buckets

Storage limit: 25
Storage is full ….
1. Assign random
put them in buckets
2. Drop the largest bucket if storage is full
Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5 …

1. Assign random
put them in buckets

1. Assign random
put them in buckets
3. Ignore items assigned to discarded buckets

B-File (Bucket-File)
• Abstraction for storing self-expiring objects
AppendItem(item, bucket), DiscardBucket(bucket)
• Fixed number of buckets • Small buckets as log

• Buckets in block boundary • Small memory
Energy to Maintain Sample
Our algorithm
Our Algorithm
On Lexar CF card
Energy to Maintain Sample
Our algorithm
Our Algorithm
3 orders of
magnitude
better
On Lexar CF card
Sub-sampling within Time Window
y Query: Find a smaller random sample

within a specified time window
Bucket Bi
12 19 35 59 75 99 100 130 189
y Observation: Each bucket is time sorted

– Use skip list to locate the first block in bucket
– Use binary search within a block to find the page

Biased Sampling
Only change: the level generation function
Lemma: lw gives an weighted sample
Lemma: le gives an exponentially decaying sample

The Spill
Hazards of
research on
fast-moving
technology
Intel rolls out

new SSD last month

Random Writes as Fast as
Sequential Writes!
Sequential Reads
Intel X25-M SSD
0.25
0.2
time (ms)
0.15
0.1
0.05
0
512
1K
2K
4K
8K
16K
Request Size
seq-read seq-write ran-read ran-write

Outline
sensornet research

– ESP
– SLIPstream
– Hi-Spade: Flash
–Claytronics

The Claytronics Vision:
A Material That Changes Shape
y Large groups of tiny robot modules (106
-109 units), working in unison to form
tangible, moving 3D shapes
y Not just an illusion of 3D (as with stereo

glasses), but real physical objects
y Both an output device (rendering,
haptics) & an input device (sensing)
Applications
y Product design
y Medical visualization
y Adaptive form-factor devices
y Telepario
y 3D fax
y Smart antennas
y Paramedic-on-demand
y Entertainment
y Etc.

Claytronics
[PIs: Seth Goldstein, Jason Campbell, Todd Mowry]
y Each sub-millimeter module (“catom”)

integrates computing & actuation
y Key issues:
– very high concurrency (106 -109 catoms)
– nondeterminism & unreliability
– efficient actuators, strong adhesion
– power, heat, dirt
– complex, dynamic networking (network diameters
≥ 1000, and changing topologies)

Making Submillimeter Catoms
patterned “flower”,
2 mold wafers
including actuators bonded around
& control circuitry 1 thinned logic wafer
arms curl up
due to stresses
between layers
Note: Both are

early attempts
[J. Robert Reid, [Igal Chertkow & Boaz Weinfeld,

Air Force Research Labs] Intel]
Catom Design
y Actuation: Roll across each other (using
electrostatics) under software control
– Planned motion, Reactive motion
y Power: Form own power grid

– Connected to external power source
y Communication: Between physically

adjacent modules
– Either electrical contact, capacitive-coupled
connections, or free space optics (wire-like)
– Simultaneously with multiple neighbors
Aggregation Goal
y In order to self-organize into a desired
shape, the catom ensemble must:
– Be able to measure key aggregate properties
(e.g., center of mass)
– Coordinate their activities
…in real time
Diameter too large for standard

hop-by-hop approach
Ensemble too dense for

longer range wireless

Speculative Forwarding
[with Casey Helfrich, Todd Mowry, Babu Pillai,
Ben Rister, Srini Seshan]
E.g., regular 2D grid
Standard approach:
(regular) gradient
Our approach:
• Hierarchical Overlay
• Speculative forwarding
on the long links

Speculative Forwarding
y Each catom maintains incoming-to-outgoing
link mapping (e.g., last used)
y Each bit along incoming wire sent on outgoing

wire according to the mapping
y When accumulate header, check for miss-

speculation Initial results
are promising
Many issues:
• miss-speculations
• creating overlay
• shape changes
Aggregation deferred to nodes in the overlay

Spills?
y Beyond what can be demonstrated on
today’s technology =>
Many aspects are open to dispute

fair comparison with previous work

Spills?
y Beyond what can be demonstrated on
today’s technology =>
Many aspects are open to dispute

fairAuthors
comparison
get with previous work
it wrong?
Still a Thrill!
Sensornet Research
y What a thrill: exciting, impactful work
– A peak at our lab’s current sensornet+ research
y Expanding our scope & time horizon

helps maintain impact & thrill
WSN
y Expect spills in research on fast-

moving or futuristic technologies
Sensornet Research
Hang on for the Ride!

Gibbons SenSys08 Keynote

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Hang on for the Ride:

The Thrills and Spills of

y Musings on the Thrills & Spills of

y Peak at our lab’s sensing related

2 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

Open new windows

How many conferences have published a paper

y Many false starts

y Big question: What’s next?

4 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

y Expanding our sights

Will talk about each in turn

5 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

y Closely co-located, communicating via an ad hoc

y Characteristics of sensor network

y Characteristics of sensed data

7 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

y From the SenSys’09 draft CFP:

SenSys takes a broad view of embedded

any distributed systems that collectively

Note: No mention of “low power”, “wireless”, etc.

y E.g., More interaction with Robotics

Tues lunch conversation

Impact of Sensor Network Commercialization

Academic research must be more forward looking,

Often, research goes beyond

11 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

Key ingredients of a solid systems paper:

Beyond what can be demonstrated on today’s

Key ingredients of a solid systems paper:

“Bold, concise, revolutionary goals

14 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

y Peak at IRP’s sensing related research

15 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

Activity from objects

Feature edge color SIFT FFT energy

17 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

Pedestrian navigation Real time energy awareness

• Lower the human cost of getting & using context

• Establish the value of high-volume context data

19 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

• Highly constrained object recognition problem

Perception SW layer that plays well Fast, efficient

Key platform differentiator

Context inference is key next-generation capability

Mid-range perception & manipulation:

y Peak at IRP’s sensing related research

24 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

26 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

27 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

1. Copy 2. Erase 3. Write

28 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

1. Copy 2. Erase 3. Write 4. Copy

29 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

1. Copy 2. Erase 3. Write 4. Copy 5. Erase

Goal for Flash: Algorithms that avoid

Our main result:

[Nath, Gibbons, VLDB’08]

32 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

33 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

34 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

35 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote

36 Phillip B. Gibbons, SenSys’08 keynote