EMS worked alongside the National Security Technology and Innovation Exchange (NSTIx) to develop technology that can enable the sharing of data within a mesh of connected surveillance sensor nodes operating in difficult environments.
Sensors nodes are often deployed that do a variety of functions to collect data in uncontrolled environments, such as provide surveillance information.
The data collected could range from audio, video, radio-frequency, and countless other forms. Historically, a sensor node would be deployed, collect data as a single entity, and then be interpreted by a human either in real-time or at a later date.
However, with the rise of cheap low equity sensor nodes, there is the potential to deploy many more sensors in much more complex operational environments to gather significantly more data. Using the historical ways to collect data does not scale as it now becomes way too complex for a human to manage in the same way. By deploying ever increasing sensor node meshes, there is an opportunity to build intelligence into this system, with this Challenge focused on the secure transport of data within the sensor node mesh.
A related field that could be used for inspiration is a “smart” office environment. “Smart” offices of the future will look at occupancy usage, use sensor data to provide thermal comfort for the occupants, collect behavioural data to avoid occupational stress, adjust lighting and acoustics autonomously depending on the user preferences at that moment in time. This complex system could be used to increase the user experience, leading to a happier and more productive work force. It is clear however with this complexity in a sensor node mesh, the data collected and processed, and the then the autonomous adjusting of the physical environment (for example, thermostat change), that there needs some intelligence in the system in both the compute side but also the communication within the sensor node mesh.
What is the gap?
To be able to maximise an intelligent sensor node mesh, the Challenge focused on the communication and transport of data between the nodes. At present, when considering nodes used for surveillance, the current processes of a human monitoring a single node does not scale when aiming to use multiple nodes at varying locations. Therefore, to enable automation and efficient communication between multiple nodes, there is development required on the transport of data between the nodes.
At the centre of this gap is scalability, reliability, self-healing, interoperability between a variety of devices, raw data collection flows, device redundancy and mesh issues at scale.