Center Joins Billion Dollar SAGE Grant
SAGE will build a national research infrastructure of new sensors that support programmable edge computers and machine learning within an interconnected cyberinfrastructure, spanning multiple major science instruments.
The Sage project is designing and building a new kind of national-scale reusable and reprogrammable cyberinfrastructure to enable AI at the edge. The Sage tower deployed in the RV lot in Taft Nicholson Center includes two Wild Sage Nodes ( out-door ready edge-computing systems with ability to interface with existing and new sensors ) and several sensors connected to them. The sensor set includes two sets of temperature, pressure, humidity, precipitation sensors and microphones, two sky-ward looking cameras for full hemispherical and zoomed selected portion view of the sky, a fully steerable (pan and tilt) Mobotix (MOBOTIX MX-M16TB-R079IP) thermal and visual camera that can detect heat signatures (-40C to +165C) and can overlay thermal data on visual images, a downward looking camera for vegetation, animal activity and snow fall etc. detection, a fully steerable and zoom capable camera to estimate sky and ground conditions (Hanwha XNP-6400RW), and a PM 2.5 and PM 10 Particulate Matter sensor (Metone ES-642). All the sensors are connected to the two Sage nodes, and the data from the sensors can be readily processed on the Sage nodes to extract information and gain knowledge on the environment nearly instantaneously. The nodes use Starlink Satellite Internet for communication (sensor and inferred data, downloading new AI/ML models and system software and feature updates). All the data produced by the nodes are available from Sage portal. The nodes can in real-time be reprogrammed (https://portal.sagecontinuum.org/apps/explore) to perform different inferences and sensing functions on audio, visual, or thermal data depending on the context and scientific goals.
To see the data from the nodes, click on the links below: