Introduction

The overall mission of the SensorRAUM project is to investigate, define, develop, and demonstrate user-friendly and intuitive user interfaces for wireless sensor networks. There are many different types of sensor networks and they are used to achieve certain goals within an area of application. The areas of application of wireless sensor networks often have a high complexity thus the pure observation or automatic analysis and interpretation of sensor data is not or hardly possible. The amount of sensors is much to high and the processes which are observed or controlled have a high complexity. These processes are often not trivial or symbolised comprehendable like in process control systems.

To enable the interaction between users and the technical system visualization and selection/input problems need to be addressed. To facilitate an easy and intuitive interaction with complex sensor systems the SensorRAUM Project researches graphically oriented 3D user interfaces for sensor network applications. The goal of SensorRAUM is to transfer the physical environment into a quasi realistic virtual presentation within a computer and thus the basis for an activation of the 3D world by sensory systems. For this purpose a 3D development environment for creating and deploying deeply collaborative multi-user online applications on multiple operating systems and devices is used. With this technology it is possible to model various 3D environments and associate interactions with object inside the 3D world. One very popular and often cited example for an application of 3D user interfaces is the 3-D virtual world SecondLife. But SecondLife has specific economical, technical and conceptual disadvantages for the planned implementation within industrial business processes.

The first steps of the SensorRAUM project will be the analysis and identification of important parameters within business applications. This comprises the analysis of applications for the new SensorRAUM technology, the evaluation of the technological feasibility and the business potential. In a second step a scenario is exemplary implemented in a 3D virtual environment which is prepared to integrate and visualize senor data.

Deliverables

• Analysis of the combination of sensor networks and 3D visualization regarding applications inspecific business fields
• Creation of a 3D World which is prepared to integrate sensor data
• Integration into a complete framework and a Demonstrator