[15.04.2008 first posted on silicon republic]
The establishment of a collaborative research centre investigating web sensor technology has been announced with an investment of €16.4m over five years.

The Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) CLARITY Centre for Science, Engineering and Technology will eventually require 90 skilled personnel.
The centre is a joint partnership between University College Dublin (UCD) and Dublin City University (DCU), with the Tyndall National Institute in Cork providing support research. SFI will provide €11.8m in funding, while industry partners will provide €4.6m.
Industry partners include IBM, Vodafone, Ericsson, Foster-Miller, ChangingWorlds, Fidelity Investments and Critical Path. CLARITY will also work with national agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the Marine Institute and the National Museum of Ireland.
The multi-site centre will pioneer ground-breaking research on the ’sensor web’, which captures the intersection between two important research areas: adaptive sensing and information discovery.
CLARITY’s research will investigate the integration of sensor data from the physical world with sophisticated information processing and artificial intelligence techniques from computer science. CLARITY aims to develop systems that can sense, process and analyse what is happening in the real world and respond in an appropriate manner.
“Sensors help us to learn more about ourselves and the world in which we live and the next generation of sensor technologies will be cheap, connected and reliable, enabling exciting new application areas,” said Professor Barry Smyth, director, CLARITY.
“We have already, for example, been using wearable sensors to design garments that are capable of monitoring the posture of the wearer, helping back-pain prone knowledge-workers to improve their seated posture.
“Other applications include the networks of sensors capable of monitoring water quality with a view to identifying and signaling potential pollution events.
“The team we have brought together in CLARITY provides a unique combination of multi-disciplinary expertise that is essential to make significant progress in this new field.”
“By graduating 45 PhD students, CLARITY will provide Irish-based companies with access to highly skilled individuals who will play a key role in generating new products and innovations in industry,” commented Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Micheál Martin TD.
“The centre will focus on empowering citizens through new technologies to harvest, refine and make use of the deluge of different kinds of information in the modern world,” remarked DCU’s Professor Alan Smeaton.
“CLARITY will develop a new generation of smarter, simpler and more proactive information services, as well as commercial products which are set to improve our quality of life, from monitoring the impact of exercise on health, new technologies to support our ageing population and innovative ways to protect the quality of our environment.”
By Niall Byrne