Sensor Network Provides Environmental Data

Tuesday, January 01 2008

Dr. Kevin Montgomery, technical director at the center and chief executive officer of Intelesense, has a history of developing systems for image processing, 3-D reconstruction, visualization, and simulation of biomedical imaging data for space-related research at Ames. On the company’s team, Dr. Carsten Mundt, the chief technology officer, is also actively engaged in several NASA-related studies, mostly in developing vital sign monitoring systems for astronauts and microsatellites. Montgomery has yet another NASA connection on his Intelesense team in Valerie Barker, who worked with Ames in 2002, designing free-flyer satellites for biological research in space.

The company’s corporate offices are in Honolulu, and it has research and development offices in Milpitas, California, as well as field offices with collaborative partners in deployment zones worldwide. Montgomery, who also holds a position as an adjunct associate professor at the University of Hawaii’s John A. Burns School of Medicine, where he works with other researchers developing surgical simulators, was visiting the island university when the idea for the company gelled.

He was visiting the Hawaiian school and met with Dr. Kenneth Kaneshiro and Michael Kido of the Center for Conservation Research and Training, a research program within the Pacific Biosciences Research Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa that was established to address the rapid extinction of various species unique to the islands. While explaining the work done in developing Lifeguard, Montgomery had the realization that the technology could also be used for environmental monitoring. Kaneshiro and Kido invited him to a workshop on environmental sensing, at which he had a remarkable experience.

Participants of the workshop were flown by helicopter to what Montgomery describes as “one of the most pristine, unspoiled, biodiverse, untraveled, remote parts of the island of Kauai, where only a handful of humans have been over the past hundred years.

“After the helicopter took off,” he recalls, “leaving us all there, the indescribable uniqueness impressed upon me the importance of preserving and protecting places like these.”

He took this newfound excitement back to the NASA/Stanford lab, where he insisted that Mundt accompany him on the next trip back. Both researchers were impressed with the magnificence of the unspoiled area and agreed that the wireless sensor networks could be used to help in its conservation.

As Montgomery explains, “The need exists everywhere to understand the interrelationships of humans with their environment and, in order to do that, we need to acquire and integrate information from many sources and visualize and understand it in intuitive ways—that’s what Intelesense is all about.”

Product Outcome

Employing networks of wireless sensors for air, water, weather, and imagery, and then integrating the sensor information with other data sources, Intelesense helps clients better understand interrelationships in a wide variety of areas, including environmental preservation, monitoring waterborne illnesses, detecting infectious diseases, and providing remote health care. Current projects range from protecting the environment, to tracking emerging infectious diseases like avian influenza (bird flu), and to helping people from around the world connect and interact with each other to better understand their environment and themselves.