Technology Assessment
and Planning

Sensors and Actuators

Sensors and actuators are the enablers of smart spaces, but their contributions are not limited to the obvious functions such as climate, lighting and device resource control. Sensors are also increasingly capable of contributing rich input for context-aware systems, and providing sophisticated services such as biometric user authentication and location determination. At a more practical level, sensor technologies such as RFID are becoming critical to physical asset management and inventorying.

TAP's interests in this area have more to do with the evaluation and practical uses of sensors and actuators, rather than with the underlying hardware technologies. Subtopics include sensor/actuator networking strategies, and system arbitration of multiple, potentially competing sensor data. For example, when determining a user's location, both RFID and Bluetooth beacons may make contradictory assertions, and systems must decide which source takes precedence.