Making things sense: Urban sensing and physical computing at The Edge

Abstract

This research initiative was started in early 2010 and takes place in collaboration with NICTA and the State Library of Queensland’s new digital culture centre, The Edge. The Edge is aimed at young people and provides mentoring, training and resources for experimentation and creativity.

Our engagement with The Edge takes place in the form of a living lab. We focus on enabling ordinary people to gain access to the multitude of data sources the city has to offer, and empower them to appropriate and “mix & match” data in order to make them meaningful to themselves, their friends and their co-workers. We are aiming to involve citizens as public actors rather than passive receivers. The engagement is multi-disciplinary, user-centric, and exploratory. Participants in the lab are able to work on real-life problems through projects and workshops. The lab aims to become a hive for the spread of viral technologies and technology probes into the wider community. The lab encourages the creation of open-source civic sensor networks that allow individuals to sense and contribute personally relevant data to the wider community (e.g., local pollution level, flooding, social wellbeing). Our engagement is part of a research proposal that is currently under review with the ARC.

As part of this activity we have been running workshops and projects on building sensor platforms, wearable components, touch-based interaction techniques as well as sharing and visualizing information on energy consumption (e.g. see our Pachube feed on energy consumption at the Edge).

Frequent updates about our activities at the Edge can be found here: (Edge/NICTA blog)

Team

Partners