CMU experiment aspires to make Pittsburgh world’s first ‘smart city’

“Our goal is to, within a year, turn a lot of the space we have access to as faculty into smart spaces that students, faculty, staff and visitors can interact with. Then our goal is to push it out to the city,” said Anind K. Dey, director of CMU’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute and lead investigator for the undertaking. In coming months, everything from coffee pots to bus stops on campus will be fitted with wireless sensors and accelerometers for GIoTTO — the name of a Google-sponsored project — that will turn everyday items into Web-enabled tools and encourage cooperation between those items and existing Internet-connected products such as smartphones or smart thermostats.