A Chicago city sensor project goes global
Each node in the Array of Things was equipped with an Nvidia graphics processing unit (or GPU) to perform computations on images out in the field and sent only processed data along to the network—a form of edge computing. As an added privacy safeguard, the nodes are designed to be installed temporarily. “I would rather not see edge computing blanketed across the city, where everywhere you walk there’s a camera that’s analyzing what you’re doing,” Catlett says. “That to me is more dystopian than I’d like to see. But I do think that these edge devices have a place for diagnosis. You drop that capability in for a purpose, and then you pull it out.” Between 2016 and 2019, the team attached 140 AoT nodes to Chicago streetlights. In a participatory process, the team at Argonne and local univer...