Sophisticated Batteryless Sensing

For decades sensing systems have relied primarily on battery power. However, batteries are not

a viable energy storage solution for the tiny devices at the edge of a sustainable Internet of Things.

Batteries are expensive, bulky, hazardous, and wear out afer a few years (even rechargeables). Replacing

and disposing of billions or trillions of dead batteries per year would be expensive and irresponsible. By

leaving the batteries behind and surviving off energy harvested from the environment, tiny intermittently

powered sensors can monitor objects in hard to reach places maintenance free for decades. Batteryless

sensing will revolutionize computing and open up new application domains from infrastructure

monitoring and wildlife tracking to wearables, healthcare, and space exploration. However, these devices

intermittent power supply make power failures the common case; requiring a rethinking of hardware and

sofware design, tool creation, and evaluation techniques.

In this talk, I will introduce the challenges of batteryless sensing, then present my recent work on

tools, hardware platforms, and language techniques that streamline the creation, testing, and

deployment of efficient, sophisticated applications on tiny, energy harvesting, batteryless devices.
Josiah Hester is a PhD candidate in Computer Science at Clemson University. Josiah's

research enables sophisticated, sustainable sensing on the tiny devices at the edge of the Internet of

Things. He explores and develops new hardware designs, sofware techniques, tools, and programming

abstractions so that developers can easily design, debug, and deploy intricate batteryless applications

that work in spite of frequent power failures. His work has received a Best Paper Award from ACM SenSys,

and two Best Poster Awards. He was also named the Outstanding PhD Student in Computer Science for

2016 by the School of Computing at Clemson University.