Distributed embedded sensor networks are now being successfully deployed in environmental monitoring of natural phenomena as well as for applications in commerce and physical security. While substantial progress in sensor network performance has appeared, new challenges have also emerged as these systems have been deployed in the natural environment. First, in order to achieve minimum sensing fidelity performance, the rapid spatiotemporal variation of environmental phenomena requires impractical deployment densities. The presence of obstacles in the environment introduces sensing uncertainty and degrades the performance of sensor fusion systems in particular for the many new applications of image sensing. The physical obstacles encountered by sensing may be circumvented by a new mobile sensing method or Networked Infomechanical Systems (NIMS). NIMS integrates distributed, embedded sensing and computing systems with infrastructure-supported mobility. NIMS now includes coordinated mobili...
Richard Pon, Maxim A. Batalin, Victor Chen, Aman K