research-article

Nurturing natural sensors

Authors:

Stacey Kuznetsov,

Eric PaulosAuthors Info & Claims

UbiComp '11: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Ubiquitous computing

Pages 227 - 236

https://doi.org/10.1145/2030112.2030144

Published: 17 September 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Sensing has played a significant role in the evolution of ubiquitous computing systems, enabling many of today's compelling interactive and ubiquitous experiences. In this paper, we argue for expanding the current landscape of sensing to include living organisms such as plants and animals, along with traditional tools and digital devices. We present a field study of ten individuals who routinely work with living organisms such as plants, fish, reptiles and bees, and rely on these organisms as well as analog instruments and digital sensors to infer environmental conditions and inform future actions. Our findings offer a new perspective on everyday biomarkers, and we use the lens of organic and non-digital sensing to reflect on current sensing paradigms in ubiquitous computing. We conclude with three opportunity areas to help frame future work in ubiquitous sensing: (1) incorporating traditional technologies and living systems into ubiquitous sensing applications, (2) developing information technologies that teach new ways of 'seeing', and (3) supporting richer forms of metadata to unite stakeholders through their actions, interests and concerns.

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Index Terms

Nurturing natural sensors
1. Information systems

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

UbiComp '11: Proceedings of the 13th international conference on Ubiquitous computing

September 2011

668 pages

ISBN:9781450306300

DOI:10.1145/2030112

General Chairs:
James Landay
University of Washington, USA & Microsoft Research Asia, China
,
Yuanchun Shi
Tsinghua University, China
,
Program Chairs:
Donald J. Patterson
University of California, Irvine, USA
,
Yvonne Rogers
Open University, UK
,
Xing Xie
Microsoft Research Asia, China

Copyright © 2011 ACM.

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Published: 17 September 2011

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Ubicomp '11: The 2011 ACM Conference on Ubiquitous Computing

September 17 - 21, 2011

Beijing, China

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Chen DSeong YJo K(2024)Nukabot: design of human-microbe-computer entanglementACM SIGGRAPH 2024 Emerging Technologies10.1145/3641517.3665786(1-2)Online publication date: 13-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3641517.3665786
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