tribune article

Taken from the Oakland Tribune Website, reprinted with premission.

Cal engineering students show their life-simplifying inventions

William Brand, STAFF WRITER

BERKELEY -- Our future will be wireless, automated and just maybe a bit easier to navigate, demonstrated Monday by a dozen far-reaching projects by University of California, Berkeley mechanical engineering graduate students. Consider these ideas:

- A tiny device that can find an empty parking place in a crowded parking lot -- and show where you parked your car on your return.

- A credit card-sized device to help firefighters find you inside a burning building.

- An exercise machine that monitors your physical condition and gives you second-to-second feedback.

- An electronic bulletin board for senior housing that would sense a person's approach and flash general messages, plus personal ones like:
"Your chess match has been canceled" or "Someone is looking for a fishing partner."

- A smart bicycle lock that would send a warning to the bike owner when someone tampered with the lock.

The occasion was a hallway "trade show" giving students a chance to show off their projects. Each involved a semester's work by teams of grad students in mechanical engineering Professor Paul Wright's design prototyping class.

Wright said the assignment included using wireless technology and "motes," tiny sensors developed by UC Berkeley computer scientists David Culler and Kris Pister.

The projects always surprise him, Wright said. One project two years ago, architectural mapping software, is being sold commercially, he said. His students also regularly win entrepreneur and high tech contests around campus, he said.

For example, E-Z Park. Team member Murat Ozalp explained that each parking space in a large parking garage would be equipped with a pressure sensor that broadcasts the news that it is empty to a central station.

Someone entering the lot would swipe their credit card in a machine, consult a screen showing the nearest empty parking spot, then pick up a dashboard sensor. A returning motorist could consult the screen at the entrance to find out where the car is. Oh yes, the sensor would also tell a central computer to deduct the parking fee, he said.

They demonstrated the process using a laptop computer, a model car and a mockup of a parking lot.

The Orpheus Life Locator System would involve a tiny sensor mote embedded perhaps in the card an employee uses to enter a business campus. Each mote would be activated when a fire alarm sounds.

Each could tell firefighters where people are -- even in smoke-filled rooms, team members Eli Leland and Jessy Baker explained, while fellow team member Jesse Bauman stood by in a firefighter's rig.

The personal trainer was created by Jon Han, Jihon Choi, Sunghoon Lee and Shantang Tripathi. They created a sensor attached to a bicep that broadcasts body temperature, pulse rate and other vital signs as one exercises to a nearby computer screen, which already has your vital statistics -- age, weight, physical condition.

By watching the screen a person can get instant feedback -- just as if
you had a personal trainer watching you, Han said.

The project had support from Ford Motor Co., UC Berkeley's Center for Information Technology Research in the Interests of Society, and the UC Berkeley Management of Technology program.

Contact William Brand at bbrand@angnewspapers.com .