A Survey of Applications of Wireless Sensors and Wireless Sensor Networks <s> E. Applications to robotics <s> A glove with 2-axis accelerometers on the finger tips and back of the hand has been built using commercial-off-the-shelf components. Taking advantage of gravity induced acceleration offsets, we have been able to identify pseudo static gestures. We have also developed software that allows the glove to be used as a mouse pointing device for a Windows 95 or NT machine. <s> BIB001 </s> A Survey of Applications of Wireless Sensors and Wireless Sensor Networks <s> E. Applications to robotics <s> This paper introduces Robomote, a robotic solution developed to explore problems in large-scale distributed robotics and sensor networks. The design explicitly aims at enabling research in sensor networking, adhoc networking, massively distributed robotics, and extended longevity. The platform must meet many demanding criteria not limited to but including: miniature size, low power, low cost, simple fabrication, and a sensor/actuator suite that facilitates navigation and localization. We argue that a robot test bed such as Robomote is necessary for practical research with large networks of mobile robots. Further, we present a preliminary analysis of Robomotes' success to this end. <s> BIB002 </s> A Survey of Applications of Wireless Sensors and Wireless Sensor Networks <s> E. Applications to robotics <s> While wireless sensor networks offer new capabilities, there are a number of issues that hinder their deployment in practice. We argue that robotics can solve or greatly reduce the impact of many of these issues. Our hypothesis has been tested in the context of an autonomous system to care for houseplants that we have deployed in our office environment. This paper describes what we believe is needed to make sensor networks practical, the role robots can play in accomplishing this, and the results we have obtained in developing our application. <s> BIB003 </s> A Survey of Applications of Wireless Sensors and Wireless Sensor Networks <s> E. Applications to robotics <s> Severe energy limitations, and a paucity of computation pose a set of difficult design challenges for sensor networks. Recent progress in two seemingly disparate research areas namely, distributed robotics and low power embedded systems has led to the creation of mobile (or robotic) sensor networks. Autonomous node mobility brings with it its own challenges, but also alleviates some of the traditional problems associated with static sensor networks. We illustrate this by presenting the design of the robomote, a robot platform that functions as a single mobile node in a mobile sensor network. We briefly describe two case studies where the robomote has been used for table top experiments with a mobile sensor network. <s> BIB004
Many applications coupling motes and robots have been proposed. For example, Robomote is a tiny robot developed by the USC Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems to promote research in large-scale sensor network where robots participate BIB002 . Applications already implemented BIB004 are the detection of level sets of scalar fields (like isothermal or isobar curves) using mobile sensor networks and imitation of the function of bacteria for seeking and discovering dissipative, gradient sources  . The objective was the tracking of a light source with simplified algorithms. In addition, a solution to the "coverage problem" by robots and motes is proposed in  . The initiative here is the attempt to have dense measurements over a wide area. The collaboration of both static and mobile networks is accomplished by mobile robots, which explore the environment and deploy motes that act as beacons. The beacons help robots to define directions. Intel is also conducting research in this area. The point of view for Intel is mobile robots that act as gateways into wireless sensor networks. Actions that aim to serve and support the operation of a sensor network are described in BIB003 . Examples of tasks are: sustaining the energy resources of the sensor network indefinitely, maintaining and configuring hardware, detecting sensor failures and appropriate deployment for connectivity among nodes. Another relevant work  concerns localization of nodes in a sensor network by means of mobile robots. This approach tries to solve the problem of unifying a network that is separated because of disconnected groups of sensors (clusters). Of course, in all these cases robots are integrated parts of the sensor network. In the range between robotics and medical applications is the virtual keyboard developed by U.C. Berkeley. The virtual keyboard is a system of wearable motes sensing acceleration. Six motes are attached to a glove, one for each finger and one at the wrist. The objective is the understanding of the relevant movements of fingers so that gestures can be recognized BIB001 . Applications could be a wireless wearable mouse/keyboard, or a pointing device, hand motion and gesture recognition for the disabled, virtual musical instruments and work training in a simulated environment.