Plenary Speakers

Dr. (Troy) Roy H. Olsson III joined DARPA as a program manager in June 2014.  At DARPA he serves as the program manager for the Near Zero Power RF and Sensor Operations (N-ZERO) program, which seeks to develop RF and physical sensors that process and detect infrequent but time critical event signatures passively, thus enabling off but alert sensors with years of lifetime from a coin cell battery.  Troy is also the program manager for the Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR), Adaptive RF Technologies (ART), Arrays at Commercial Timescales (ACT) and Signal Processing at RF (SPAR) programs. 

Troy received B.S. degrees in electrical engineering and in computer engineering from West Virginia University and the MS and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.  He is currently serving DARPA while on leave as a Principal Electronics Engineer in the MEMS Technologies Department at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM.  At Sandia, Troy led research programs in the area of miniature piezoelectric filters and oscillators for small, high performance RF systems.  He has authored more than 90 technical journal and conference papers and holds 18 patents in the area of microelectronics and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Together with the Sandia Microresonator Research Team, he was awarded an R&D100 award in 2011 for his work on Microresonator Filters and Frequency References.

The DARPA Near Zero Power RF and Sensor Operations (N-ZERO) program seeks to overcome the power limitations of persistent sensing by developing wireless, event-driven sensing capabilities that allow physical, electromagnetic and other sensors to remain dormant—effectively asleep yet aware—until an event of interest awakens them. State-of-the-art (SOA) sensors use active electronics to monitor the environment for such external triggers.  The power consumed by these electronic circuits limits the sensor lifetime to durations of weeks to months. In contrast, N-ZERO seeks to exploit the energy in signal signatures to detect and recognize attention-worthy events, such as the presence of a particular machinery type or radio communications protocol, while rejecting noise and interference.  This paper will discuss the new architectural approaches and component technologies being developed under the N-ZERO program, which are predicted to extend the lifetime of wireless sensors to several years under many operational scenarios.

Professor Chwee Teck Lim is a Provost’s Chair Professor at the National University of Singapore. His research interests include the development of microfluidic technologies and sensors for disease detection, diagnosis and health monitoring. Prof Lim has authored more than 290 journal papers and delivered more than 280 invited talks. He is an elected Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering as well as an elected Council Member of the World Council of Biomechanics. He currently sits on the editorial boards of more than 14 international journals. Prof Lim have garnered more than 50 research awards and honors including being in the Asian Scientist 100 in 2016, Vladimir K. Zworykin Award in 2015, University’s Outstanding Researcher Award and Outstanding Innovator Award in 2014, Credit Suisse Technopreneur of the Year Award & Wall Street Journal Asian Innovation Award (Gold) in 2012, President's Technology Award in 2011 and IES Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award in 2010.

There has been an increased use of body sensors for monitoring physiological signals and bodily movements in recent years. However, current conventional sensors are typically rigid and bulky.  Here, we develop highly flexible, robust and wearable liquid-based resistive sensors that consist of soft elastomer-based microfluidic templates that encapsulate conductive liquid as the sensing element. As a proof-of-concept, we demonstrate the recognition, differentiation, and measurement of distinct muscle-induced hand motions as well as handgrip strength and localized dynamic foot pressure. Overall, this work highlights the potential use of these liquid-based microfluidic sensors in a wide range of biomedical applications including that of rehabilitation.

Prof. Paul J.M. Havinga is full professor and chair of the Pervasive Systems research group at the Computer Science department at the University of Twente in the Netherlands. He received his PhD at the University of Twente on the thesis entitled "Mobile Multimedia Systems" in 2000, and was awarded with the 'DOW Dissertation Energy Award' for this work. His research themes have focused on wireless sensor networks, large-scale distributed systems, and energy-efficient wireless communication. He has a significant experience as project manager in several international research projects on wireless sensor networks. In 2001 he initiated the first European project on wireless sensor networks EYES, and many national and international projects evolved from this. In May 2007 he received the ICT Innovation Award for the successful transfer of knowledge from university to industrial use. In June 2007 he received the "van den Kroonenberg award" for being a successful innovative entrepreneur.

In this presentation animal monitoring using wireless sensor networks will be addressed from various points of view, ranging from agriculture, sports, and wildlife monitoring. A special focus will be given to wildlife monitoring, as this requires the most complex and complete solution. In particular mechanisms and techniques to detect poachers in a wildlife park will be addressed.
There are various studies on the deployment of sensor nodes for animal tracking. Environmental scientists and zoologists have been increasingly using these technologies to collect data from wild terrestrial areas and transmit them to the remote databases. In some of these applications, the sensor nodes are attached to the animals, forming an ad hoc wireless network of mobile nodes.
Detecting poachers is even much more complicated, and requires a process of planning, installation, execution, data collection, and data interpretation. We use a combination of wireless sensing  techniques,  ranging from monitoring disturbances of herds of animals in the field, (virtual) fence detection, and air borne sensing.