Note: Copyright laws prevent me from listing the entire article, listed are several sections which are particularly cool.

Eyes On The Net

A boom of computer-controlled devices is enabling Internet users to get into the action.

By Mike Toner

Steve Mann is used to people watching as he lunches with friends or rides his bike along Boston's Charles River. At any given moment, dozens of people may be seeing the world exactly as he does.

Lately, computer users on six continents have been seeing the world through Mann's eyes. His "wearable wireless webcam" provides anyone logged on to his Internet home address with live views of his daily routine.

The Net is sprouting eyes. And ears. And vending machines, hot tubs, coffeepots, robot gardeners and model railroads. The armada of devices plugged into the Internet, in fact, is transforming the network into a bizarre place that falls some- where between George Orwell's 1984 and Can- '' did Camera' run amok.

'A year ago, there were only a few devices connected to the Internet,' says Anthony Anderberg, a computer science student at Dakota State University who is tracking the trend. 'But the number of devices is exploding. Uses for these things are as diverse as a person's imagination.'

...as devices have proliferated, imaginative applications of telepresence technology have attracted a huge following among rank-and-file Internet users.

More than 25,000 Internet users a day, for instance, tap into the University of Ulm, Germany, where they take turns running the Internet's first model train. A video camera provides a slightly jerky view of three trains as they race around the oval track.

And at the University of Southern California, more than 2,500 people have joined an Internet "garden club" that allows them to use a one-armed robot to tend a small indoor garden. Members are assigned a fixed point in the tabletop garden where they can plant a seed and water it-one teaspoon at a time.

Given the groundswell of interest, the day may not be so far off when people water their own plants from afar. Maybe they'll even figure out a way to feed the cat and walk the dog via the Internet.


Reality Check

Things you can see and do on the Internet:

Water a petunia in USC's robotic telegarden
http://www.usc.edu/dept/garden

See the world through Steve's webcam
http://www-white.media.mit.edu/~steve/netcam.html

Operate a model railroad in Ulm, Germany
http://rr-vs.informatik.uni-ulm.de/rr/

Check out the activity at Steve's Ant Farm
http://sec.dgsys.com/AntFarm.html

See the weather at dozens of locations
http://cirrus.sprl.umich.edu/wxnet/wxcam.html

Grab a live view of Georgia Techand the Downtown Connector
http://vista.homecom.com/webcam/cam2.html

Check the temperature of a hot tub in Ypsilanti, Mich.
http://www.actrix.gen.nz/ruapehu/

Anthony's list of other devices on the Internet
http://www.anderbergfamily.net/ant/machines/


Copyright © 1995 by The Atlanta Journal Constituion

Return to Anthony's List of Internet Accessible Machines