Effective interactive web-based control of large-scale high-bandwidth sensor systems

In theory, sensor systems scale well. If more data is required for a particular application, install another sensor. Problems begin to arise when the resulting enormous assemblage of loosely-coupled data must be perceived as information by a human being. Even worse, that human might wish to interact with some or all parts of the sensor system. More difficult still: there may be multiple human operators, all with different priorities, each desiring to perceive or control some or all of the system. Since it is possible to scale systems to the point at which there are far more sensors than users, we must assume that, without care, operator and client hardware overload is a near certainty. We must couple user requirements and architecture design at the outset or we face the probability of creating a system of maximum cost with minimal chance of fulfilling its users' requirements. The results of this work are encouraging: the largest installation of the LiveWave FirstView(TM) system is currently encoding and streaming in excess of 4000 frames per second.