MulSemedia Sensor Networks: A New Frontier in Research

Abstract

Although the past several decades have seen significant progress in the development of multimedia sensor networks, the multimedia only stimulates sight and hearing, neglecting three other fundamental human senses, namely, touch, smell, and taste. In recent years, the emergence of extended reality (XR), digital twins, digital currency, holographic-type communication systems, and Metaverse, requires all five human senses must be addressed and stimulated to create a fully immersive experience for users. Thus, MultiSensory media (MulSemedia) capturing all five senses will play a critical role for next generation sensor networks research in the next decade.
This talk provides an overview of the history, background, use cases, existing research, devices, and standards of mulsemedia. Additionally, the challenges in mulsemedia research from the perspective of wireless sensor networking are discussed. In particular, the research challenges, such as, integrated communication/sensing, mulsemedia streaming, scheduling, intra- and inter mulsimedia synchronization, AI/ML algorithms with LLM (Large Language Models), semantic communication, are presented which will facilitate the design and commercialization of next generation mulsemedia sensor networks. The potential of 6G wireless systems to address these challenges is highlighted, and several research directions that can advance mulsemedia communications are identified.

Biography

I.F. Akyildiz (Life Fellow, IEEE and Fellow of ACM) received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Erlangen–Nürnberg, Germany, in 1978, 1981, and 1984, respectively. He served as the Ken Byers Chair Professor in Telecommunications, the Past Chair of the Telecom Group at the ECE, and the Director of the Broadband Wireless Networking Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology, from 1985 to 2020. He is the Founder and President of the Truva Inc, a consulting company based in Atlanta, GA, USA, since 1989. He is the Founder and the Editor-in-Chief of the newly established of International Telecommunication Union Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies (ITU J-FET) since August 2020. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, since June 2020. Currently he is an Adjunct Professor with the University of Helsinki, Finland and University of Iceland since 2020. He had many other international affiliations during his career and established research centers in Spain, South Africa, Finland, Saudi Arabia, Russia and India. Dr. Akyildiz is an IEEE Fellow since 1996, and ACM Fellow since 1997. He received numerous awards from IEEE, ACM, and other professional organizations, including ACM Sigmobile Award (2003), Humboldt Award (2014-2016 and 2023) from Germany and TUBITAK Award (2011) from Turkiye. In September 2023, according to Google Scholar his h-index is 137 and the total number of citations to his articles is more than 143+K. His current research interests include Mulsemedia Communication, Networking 2030, Metaverse, Hologram and Extended Reality Communication, 6G/7G wireless systems, TeraHertz Communication, Underwater Communication.

Wattics & BuildSys: A Tale of Innovation, Struggle, and Perseverance

Abstract

Wattics Energy Analytics was formed together with BuildSys, they shared the same founder and in several ways they helped each other succeed. But as it often happens, research comes much earlier than customer adoption and so BuildSys was successful much earlier than Wattics. When the First BuildSys Workshop On Sensing Systems For Energy-Efficiency In Buildings was launched in Berkeley in 2009, it immediately attracted major interest from the research community. However, that did not really translate into immediate market traction for new technologies proposed at the workshop. Similarly, in spite of a strong need for energy consumption reduction and for efficient use of scarce natural resources, Wattics energy analytics was a foreign and unimportant concept for many organizations.
This keynote will bring through the journey of a startup that was probably created too early with a technology too advanced and a market which was not ready for it. This was a prelude to a series of unfortunate events which brought Wattics close to bankruptcy. Lessons were often learned in the hardest ways and several founders were lost along the journey. But every business has its own pace to grow and sometimes, a great result is just to keep the things alive over the years of scarcity, carefully managing costs, talking to customer early adopters, improving the technology and patiently waiting for the strong wind. The gale will eventually come, be ready to sail at high speed, to grow fast and eventually achieve a significant exit.

Biography

Dr. Ruzzelli founded Wattics energy analytics and served as technical leader and then CEO for 11 years from technology conception through business expansion in 50 countries before leaving his position. He now works as an executive in energy and sustainability at EnergyCAP but with an itch to start something new again. Dr. Ruzzelli's main expertise is around energy data platforms that are commercialised through SaaS model. He received a Ph.D. in computer science and a masters degree in electronic engineering. In 2009, Dr. Ruzzelli started Buildsys as a workshop and served as its general chair for 3 years while being a research fellow and principal investigator at University College Dublin. His academic contributions to the filed include 20 articles and 2 European awards for research on AI applied to energy data. While he loves developing innovative software for the energy service sector, in his spare time, he also loves flying to Sardinia with his kids to help his dad producing some great home-made olive oil and wine.