Tutorial 2: Collaborative Processing in Sensor Networks

Abstract: Sensors are considered the last missing link between the Internet and the physical world. A sensor network forms a loosely-coupled distributed environment where collaborative processing among multiple sensor nodes is essential in order to compensate for each other's limited capability in sensing, processing, power supply, and to tolerate faults. The extremely constraint resources of sensor networks have presented unique challenges to collaborative processing, the biggest of which is the contradictory requirements between energy efficiency and fault tolerance. While energy-efficient approaches try to limit the redundancy such that minimum amount of energy is required for fulfilling a certain task, redundancy is needed for providing fault tolerance since sensors might be faulty, malfunctioning, or even malicious. A balance has to be struck between these two objectives.

This tutorial discusses an integrated system design that tackles the unique challenges presented by sensor networks. This design concerns not only the development of effective processing algorithms, it also studies supporting computing paradigms and protocols which play an important role in facilitating the collaborative processing. We tackle challenging application problems like multiple target detection and unknown target identification, which add intelligence to the sensor network and eventually stimulate the practical deployment of sensor network in a more complex environment.

Biography: Lynne E. Parker Lynne Parker received her Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1994, performing research on cooperative control algorithms for multi-robot systems in MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, with a minor in brain and cognitive science. She recieved her M.S. degree in computer science from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and her B.S. degree in computer science from Tennessee Technological University, with a minor in mathematics.

Dr. Parker joined the faculty of the Department of Computer Science at The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, as Associate Professor in 2002, founding the Distributed Intelligence Laboratory at that time. She also holds an appointment as Adjunct Distinguished Research and Development Staff Member in the Computer Science and Mathematics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), where she worked as a full time researcher for several years. Her current research is in the areas of distributed mobile robotics, artificial intelligence, sensor networks, machine learning, embedded systems, and multi-agent systems. Dr. Parker's research has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), ORNL, Department of Energy (DOE), NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), Caterpillar, and Hughes Research Laboratory (HRL).

Dr. Parker received the PECASE Award (U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers) in 2000, the DOE Office of Scinece Early Career Scientist Award in 1999, the UT-Battelle Technical Achievement Award for Significant Research Accomplishments in 2000, and the University of Tennessee Angie Warren Perkins Award for scholarship, teaching, and contributions to campus life in 2006. She has published over 80 articles in peer-reviewed literature, including five edited books on the topic of distributed robotics. She is a frequent invited speaker at international conferences, workshops, and universities, having given over 90 invited lectures. She is a Senior Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics, an Associate Editor of IEEE Intelligent Systems Magazine, and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems. Dr. Parker is a senior member of IEEE, and is also a member of Sigma Xi, AAAI, and ACM.