The Economist, June 10, 2010: Power from thin air

Our first paper on WREL (wireless power transfer system) published...see publications list below.

New York Times Jan 30, 2010: Smart Dust? Not Quite, but We're Getting There

The Times (UK) Jan 25, 2010: Meet Marvin, the robot that can plug itself in

Our robot Marvin launching CeBIT with Craig Barrett, Gov Schwarzenegger, and Chancellor Merkel.

Intel ads: "me" shaking hands with a robot; and my Chinese alter-ego who "pulls electricity from atmosphere".

Click here for older news items.

I am a Principal Engineer at Intel Research Seattle. I also have affiliate faculty appointments in the departments of EE (Electrical Engineering) and CSE (Computer Science and Engineering) at the University of Washington. In 2008 I co-taught CSE 466 - Software for Embedded Systems with Gaetano Borriello.

My research interest is in the area of sensor systems: inventing new sensor systems, devising new ways to power them, and developing algorithms for using them. The research has application in the domains of ubiquitous computing, robotics, and HCI. I am currently working on 3 projects: novel sensors for robotic manipulation, resonant (non-radiative) wireless power transfer, and (radiative) wirelessly powered UHF-RFID-compatible sensing platforms.

I am the PI of Intel's WREL (Wireless Resonant Energy Link) project, which aims to transfer tens of watts wirelessly. Here is a recent NY Times article describing WREL as well as some of our robotics work).

I also lead a project called WISP (Wireless Identification and Sensing Platform). WISP is a battery-free platform for sensing and computation. It consists of a fully-programmable 16 bit microcontroller that is powered wirelessly, by radio waves: it harvests all the energy it needs from a standards-compliant UHF RFID reader. It also receives data from and sends data to the RFID reader.

I co-founded Intel's Personal Robotics project, a collaboration that includes Intel Research Seattle, Intel Research Pittsburgh, and colleagues at the University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon University. Here is a YouTube video demonstating our work on E-Field Pretouch for robot hand preshaping, and another showing arm alignment and grasping. This one shows the robot plugging itself in to an ordinary electrical outlet, by sensing the 60Hz electric field emitted from the outlet.

Educational Background

• Ph.D. 1999, M.S. 1995, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Advisor: Neil Gershenfeld. Dissertation: Electric Field Imaging.

• M.A. 1997 (B.A. Hons 1993), University of Cambridge. Natural Sciences (Physics and Theoretical Physics).

• B.A. 1991 Magna Cum Laude, Williams College. Computer Science, Philosophy. Highest Honors for Thesis.

Publications

Robotics

• Robot, Feed Thyself: Plugging in to Unmodified Electrical Outlets by Sensing Emitted AC Electric Fields. Brian Mayton, Louis LeGrand, Joshua R. Smith. To Appear in Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2010).
• An Electric Field Pretouch System for Grasping and Co-Manipulation. Brian Mayton, Louis LeGrand, Joshua R. Smith. To appear in Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2010).
• Human-Guided Grasp Measures Improve Grasp Robustness on a Physical Robot. Ravi Balasubramanian, Ling Xu, Peter Brook, Joshua R. Smith, Yoky Matsuoka, To appear in Proceedings of the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA 2010).
• A Spotlight on Security and Privacy Risks with Future Household Robots: Attacks and Lessons Tamara Denning, Cynthia Matuszek, Karl Koscher, Joshua R. Smith, Tadayoshi Kohno. In the Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2009), September 30th -- October 3rd 2009. Click here for FAQ.
• Electric Field Servoing for Robotic Manipulation, Ryan Wistort, Joshua R. Smith. Proceedings of IEEE/RSJ 2008 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2008).
• Electric Field Imaging Pretouch for Robotic Graspers, Joshua R. Smith, Eric Garcia, Ryan Wistort, Ganesh Krishnamoorthy. IEEE/RSJ 2007 International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2007).

  Wireless Power (including WREL)

• Analysis, Experimental Results, and Range Adaptation of Magnetically Coupled Resonators for Wireless Power Transfer, Alanson P. Sample, David T. Meyer, Joshua R. Smith, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics
• Experimental Results with two Wireless Power Transfer Systems, Alanson Sample, Joshua R. Smith, 2009 IEEE Radio and Wireless Symposium (RawCon 2009).

  RFID & Sensing (WISP)

• NeuralWISP: A Wirelessly-Powered Neural Interface with 1-m Range, D. Yeager, J. Holleman, R. Prasad, J.R. Smith, B. Otis. To appear in IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems.
• A Capacitive Touch Interface for Passive RFID Tags Alanson P. Sample, Daniel J. Yeager, Joshua R. Smith. Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on RFID. Winner of Best Paper Award!
• NeuralWISP: An Energy-Harvesting Wireless Neural Interface with 1-m Range, Jeremy Holleman, Dan Yeager, Richa Prasad, Joshua R. Smith, and Brian Otis, BioCAS 2008.
• Demonstration: RFID Sensor Networks with the Intel WISP. Michael Buettner, Ben Greenstein, Richa Prasad, Alanson Sample, Joshua R. Smith, Daniel Yeager, David Wetherall. 6th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (Sensys 2008). Winner of Best Demo award!
• RFIDs and Secret Handshakes: Defending Against Ghost-and-Leech Attacks and Unauthorized Reads with Context-Aware Communications, Alexei Czeskis, Karl Koscher, Joshua R. Smith, Tadayoshi Kohno. 15th ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security, October 27-31, 2008.
• Revisiting Smart Dust with RFID Sensor Networks Michael Buettner, Ben Greenstein, Alanson Sample, Joshua R. Smith. Seventh ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets-VII), Alberta, Canada, Oct 6-7 2008.
• WISP: A Passively Powered UHF RFID Tag with Sensing and Computation Daniel J. Yeager, Alanson P. Sample, Joshua R. Smith in S.A. Ahson, M. Ilyas Eds. RFID Handbook: Applications, Technology, Security, and Privacy, CRC Press.
• Design of an RFID-Based Battery-Free Programmable Sensing Platform Alanson P. Sample, Daniel J. Yeager, Pauline S. Powledge, Alexander V. Mamishev, Joshua R. Smith. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Vol. 57, No. 11, Nov. 2008, pp. 2608-2615.
• Wirelessly-Charged UHF Tags for Sensor Data Collection, Daniel Yeager, Richa Prasad, David Wetherall, Pauline Powledge, Joshua Smith. IEEE International Conference on RFID 2008.
• RFID MAC Performance Evaluation Based on ISO/IEC 18000-6 Type C You-Chang Ko, Sumit Roy, Joshua R. Smith, Hyong-Woo Lee, and Choong-Ho Cho, IEEE Communications Letters, Vol. 12, No. 6, June 2008.
• An Enhanced RFID Multiple Access Protocol for Fast Inventory. You-Chang Ko, Sumit Roy, Joshua R. Smith, Hyung-Woo Lee, Choong-Ho Cho, IEEE Globecom 2007.
• Maximalist cryptography and computation on the WISP UHF RFID tag, Hee-Jin Chae, Daniel J. Yeager, Joshua R. Smith, Kevin Fu. In Proceedings of the Conference on RFID Security, July 2007.
• Design of a Passively-Powered, Programmable Sensing Platform for UHF RFID Systems, Alanson P. Sample, Daniel J. Yeager, Pauline S. Powledge, Joshua R. Smith. IEEE International Conference on RFID 2007, March 26-28.
• Energy scavenging for inductively coupled passive RFID systems, B. Jiang, J. R. Smith, M. Philipose, S. Roy, K. Sundara-Rajan, and A. Mamishev. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, February 2007, Vol. 56, No. 1, pp. 118-125.
• A wirelessly powered platform for sensing and computation, [pdf] Joshua R. Smith, Alanson Sample, Pauline Powledge, Alexander Mamishev, Sumit Roy. Proceedings of Ubicomp 2006: 8th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing. Orange Country, CA, USA, September 17-21 2006, pp. 495-506.
• RFID-Based Techniques for Human Activity Recognition, [pdf] Joshua R. Smith, Kenneth P. Fishkin, Bing Jiang, Alexander Mamishev, Matthai Philipose, Adam Rea, Sumit Roy, Kishore Sundara-Rajan. Communications of the ACM, v48, no. 9, Sep 2005.
• ID Modulation: Embedding Sensor Data in an RFID Timeseries, [pdf] Joshua R. Smith, Bing Jiang, Sumit Roy, Matthai Philipose, Kishore Sundara-Rajan, Alexander Mamishev. Proceedings of Information Hiding 2005, LNCS 3727, pp. 234-246.
• Energy Scavenging for Inductively Coupled Passive RFID Systems, [pdf] Bing Jiang, Sumit Roy, Kishore Sundara-Rajan, Matthai Philipose, Joshua R. Smith, and Alexander V. Mamishev. Proceedings of the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Technology Conference, Ottawa, Canada, May 17-19 2005, pp. 984-989.
• Battery-Free Wireless Identification and Sensing, [pdf] Matthai Philipose, Joshua R. Smith, Bing Jiang, Kishore Sundara-Rajan, Alexander Mamishev, Sumit Roy. IEEE Pervasive Computing, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 37-45, January-March 2005.

  Data Hiding, Security, Sensing, Misc

• Imperceptible Sensory Channels [pdf] Joshua R. Smith. IEEE Computer, Vol. 37, No. 6, pp. 84-85, June 2004.
• Sensors, Tags, and Security, [pdf] Joshua R. Smith. Proceedings of the State of Technology Conference on Mobile Wireless Technologies for Persons with Disabilities, Atlanta, GA, May 11-12 2004, pp. 60-66.
• FiberFingerprint Identification, [pdf] Eric Metois, Paul M. Yarin, Noah Salzman, and Joshua R. Smith. Proceedings of the Third Workshop on Automatic Identification, Tarrytown, NY, March 2002, pp. 147-154.
• Developments in Steganography, [pdf] Joshua R. Smith and Christopher Dodge. Proceedings of Information Hiding: Third International Workshop, Dresden, Germany, September/October 1999. Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 1768, pp. 77-87.
• Microstructure-Based Indicia, [pdf] Joshua R. Smith and Andrew V. Sutherland. Proceedings of the Second Workshop on Automatic Identification Advanced Technologies, Morristown, NJ. October 1999, pp. 79-83.
• Electric Field Imaging, [pdf] my PhD thesis. February 1999.
• Synchronous Undersampling and the LazyFish, [pdf] a chapter of my thesis, and LazyFish Technical Documentation, an appendix.
• Electric Field Sensing for Graphical Interfaces, [pdf] Joshua R. Smith, Tom White, Christopher Dodge, David Allport, Joseph Paradiso, and Neil Gershenfeld. Computer Graphics and Applications, Vol. 18, No. 3, 1998, pp 54-61.
• Distributing Identity [pdf] Joshua R. Smith. IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine Vol. 6, No. 1, March 1999, pp 49-56.
• Code Division Multiplexing of a Sensor Channel: A Software Implementation [pdf] Joshua R. Smith, Christopher Salthouse, and Neil Gershenfeld. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication, Vol 17 No 4, April 1999, pp 725-731.
• Stealth Barcodes. Joshua R. Smith and Barrett Comiskey. Proceedings of the Workshop on Automatic Identification Advanced Technologies, Stony Brook, N.Y., November 1997.
• Distributed Protocols for ID Assignment. Joshua R. Smith. Proceedings of the First Workshop on Automatic Identification Advanced Technologies, Stony Brook, N.Y., November 1997.
• Modulation and Information Hiding in Images [pdf] [ps] Joshua R. Smith and Barrett O. Comiskey. Presented at the Workshop on Information Hiding, Isaac Newton Institute, University of Cambridge, UK, May 1996. Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science Volume 1174, pp. 207-226.
• Field Mice: Extracting Hand Geometry From Electric Field Measurements [pdf] Joshua R. Smith. IBM Systems Journal, Volume 35, No. 3&4, 1996, pp 587-608.
• Applying Electric Field Sensing to Human-Computer Interfaces [pdf] Tom Zimmerman, Joshua R. Smith, Joe Paradiso, David Allport, and Neil Gershenfeld. Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI-95), May 1995.
• Lattice Polymer Automata [pdf] [ps] Steen Rasmussen and Joshua R. Smith. Berichte der BunsenGesellschaft fur Physikalische Chemie 98, No. 9, pp. 1185-1193 (1994)
• Evolving Models of Dynamical Systems with a Genetic Algorithm. Joshua R. Smith and Donald House. Proceedings of IEE Colloquium on Genetic Algorithms for Control and Systems Engineering, London, April 1992. IEE Digest 1992/106.
• Designing Biomorphs with an Interactive Genetic Algorithm.[pdf] [ps] Joshua R. Smith. Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Genetic Algorithms, University of California, San Diego, pp. 535-538. June 1991. UUencoded, gziped, and tar-ed copy of source code for BUGSX software (port to X Windows by Robert Gasch of original BUGS software described in the paper). Includes PS version of paper.