CC* Integration: SENSELET: Sensory Network Infrastructure for Scientific Laboratory Environments

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

Scientific instruments (e.g., scanning electron microscopes) are extensively used to discover new materials, develop novel semiconductor device fabrication recipes, and perform new biological processes. One way to speed up scientific discoveries is to provide scientists with advanced cyber-infrastructures to capture, transmit, store, share, analyze, and correlate as much environmental metadata (e.g., humidity, temperature) from scientific lab environments as possible. Current network infrastructure does not capture any external wireless sensory data around the instruments. The recent advent of low-cost, cloud-based sensors and the introduction of diverse wireless network technologies, low-cost mobile and personal devices, and Internet of Things (IoT) solutions provide a novel and viable path for automating sensory data collection in diverse science laboratory environments. SENSELET, a SEnsory Network infrastructure for SciEntific Lab EnvironmenTs, has the goals of (a) deploying a diverse wireless and scalable sensory infrastructure close to scientific instruments, and (b) correlating and synchronizing sensory data with cloud-based instrument data and metadata in real-time and on-demand. The SENSELET infrastructure will provide additional measurements that will increase accuracy of scientific results, and enable better environmental monitoring and control of labs for lab managers. The SENSELET infrastructure will include (a) wireless sensors such as humidity, temperature, and vibration sensors; (b) an edge computing device with multiple wireless communication interfaces residing in the lab; and (c) private cloud computing service to store and correlate sensory data with instrument data in real-time or on-demand. SENSELET will provide trusted and real-time instrument data uploading, curation, search, and coordination services. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.