In this presentation we shall first describe the genesis of the Center, its scientific goals and organization. The second half describes the most recent technical accomplishments, notably related to the network of MOTEs, and their applications.

A MOTE is an assembly of sensors, a small computer and a radio. It has the capability of sensing some physical property, such as temperature, light, velocity or acceleration, chemical sensors, strain gage sensor and their like. The computer has a small operating system, called TinyOS, which enables the user to program and control some of their activity. The radio transmits the sensed and processed information in 36 byte packets. The MOTEs operate on 2AA batteries.

We shall present several examples of applications of these reconfigurable networks. However we shall also show the outstanding technical problems and issues of privacy and reliability.