If one day we find ourselves living in much smarter homes, we will likely owe a debt to the work of Shwetak Patel, an assistant professor at the University of Washington and past TR35 honoree. On Tuesday, Patel was named to the list of 2011 MacArthur Fellows. A look through his work over the past several years reveals a creative devotion to improving daily life by introducing smart sensors into the home.

As TR wrote in 2009 when honoring Patel:

Walls can talk, and [Patel] captures their stories: tales of how people move through their homes and how they use electricity, gas, and water. Patel has shown that each electrical appliance in a house produces a signature in the building's wiring; plugged into any outlet, a single sensor that picks up electrical variations in the power lines can detect the signal made by every device as it's turned on or off.

Patel has pursued that vision relentlessly in the years since then. He started with sensors that could track home water use. The idea led to a startup called Zensi, which was soon acquired by the electronics hardware manufacturer Belkin.

After realizing that replacing batteries might hold people back from deploying sensors, Patel and colleagues also produced research on how to reduce sensor power usage by leveraging the existing wiring in a building as an antenna.

Earlier this year, Patel participated in a project that could turn an entire home into a smart interface. The result was technology that can turn walls into a touch-sensitive surface akin to the screen of an iPhone.

Congratulations to Patel on his latest honor.

Augmented Steps This "haptic" floor can mimic the look and feel of sand.
Credit: Yon Visell

Researchers at McGill University in Montreal, Canada have developed floor tiles that can simulate the look, sound and feel of snow, grass or pebbles underfoot. Such a tool could perhaps be used for augmented reality applications, tele-presence, training, rehabilitation or even as virtual foot controllers.

The modular "haptic" floor tiling system is made up of a deformable plate suspended on a platform. Between the plate and platform are sensors that detect forces from the user's foot. And the plate can give off vibrations that mimic the feeling of stepping on different materials. A top-down projection and speakers add visual and audio feedback.

Yon Visell, a researcher at McGill's Center for Intelligent Machines and first author of the paper, says the tiles could be used "either for human computer interaction or immersive virtual reality applications."

The floor could even function as a giant touch-screen controlled by feet, Visell suggests, acting as a way of navigating a giant map on the floor of a building lobby or public square. He says it could also be used in gaming and entertainment, adding more interactivity.

The group detailed the floor tiles in a paper presented at the 2010 IEEE Haptics Symposium, in Waltham, MA last month.

The UK company Peratech, which last month signed a deal to develop novel pressure-sensing technology for screen maker Nissha, has announced that it will use the same approach to make artificial "skin" for the MIT Media Lab.

Peratech makes an electrically conductive material called quantum tunneling composite (QTC). When the material is compressed electrons jump between two conductors separated by polymer insulating layer covered with metallic nanoparticles. QTC has already been used to make small sensors for NASA's Robonaut and for a robotic gripper made by Shadow Robot Company.

QTC robot skin could perhaps let a robot know precisely where it has been touched, and with how much pressure. It could also be helpful in designing machines that have better grasping capabilities, and for developing more natural ways for machines to interact with humans.

The company says QTC can be screen-printed as a flexible, robust sheet as thin as 75 microns or made into a coating just 10 microns thick. Because the material reacts only when a force is applied, it consumes little power. And it's flexibility will let it conform to unique robotic shapes.