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SmartDust Sensorwebs 'Real Soon Now'
DeAshcroft writes "EE Times has a piece on progress with the four-year-old DARPA-conceived Smart Dust self-organizing sensor networks. Based on Berkeley's TinyOS and TinyDB open-source projects, the article reports several companies are demonstrating both military and civilian applications. Ars Technica adds background and commentary on issues not discussed in the EET article."
I'm still waiting for my magic server pixie dust...could this fill the role?
A beowulf clu.... nevermind, my bad....
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
Finally a star trek concept becomes reality
reSisTanCe iS fUtILe
This is actually kind of scary. I mean, the advantage is that the enemy doesn't know their being spied on, right? So how soon until this is used for "civilian surveillance"? Next election I'm voting for Nadir.
Smart Dust? I must have the world's most powerful Beowulf cluster under my bed.
Trolling is a art,
If the enemy ever did find out their presence, couldn't they use some kind of microwaves or something to disable the sensors?
Ah am not a crook! (\(-__-)/)
It's another step toward The Mesh, covered very well in a Small Times cover package last year.
If smart dust and dust bunnies under the furniture get together, there'd be no end to the mess they produce, and produce, and produce...
I used to have a good sig...
So I guess the Magic Server Pixiedust is a reality - guess IBM will be loosing out!
Make it idiot-proof and someone will build a better idiot.
Migod... It can't be. A post that isn't a repeat!
Quick! Archive it for posterity!
Twice.
Shape the motes like spiders... and give them simple commands like "kill Tom Selleck"
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
The day someone makes an app that makes my dust display a VGA output I'm won over.
In Soviet Russia, the sensor net watches Y...ah...that didn't really work did it? On a somewhat more serious note, how hard are these things to fool? Electronic gadgetry is notorious for it's ability to get things wrong, how is this one (I assume it is somehow) different?
We should really have something like a '-1 paranoid', or should that be +1? Can't be sure these days.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
If we had this tehcnology now, we could sprinkle a load over Iraq to detect chemical weapons residues and radiation above background levels.
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
Would my Roomba become smarter after cleaning up the dust? Talk about reuse...
My sig left me for a younger user id.
One possible solution to protect against smart dust would to create military buildings with a high internal atmospheric pressure: people who enter the building who create a draft directed at the outside, which should be enough to blow away "smart dust".
At least I hope so... If you cross Total Information Awareness and smart dust you have one scary scenario... =(
And even "clean" (high internal pressure) buildings don't help military units in the fields...
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Anybody who's read Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky is already familiar with the concept of sensor-equipped smart dust that has lots of uses. That was a great book, by the way.
Anti Dust
Is this it?
US this, US that... There are other countries in the world, you know.
</stupid humor>
Do not read this sig.
wasn't this in "The Diamond Age" by Stephenson?
Sounds like the plot of a book I read recently. What was it again? Oh yes, Michael Crichton's PREY. I'm just waiting for the smart dust to start munching on us.
Karma: Excellent^(-t/Tau), Tau=Wittiness/Trollishness
is running for independence .. I don't know how 'smart' that is, however...
SmartDust Sensorwebs 'Real Soon Now'
Sooner than Duke Nukem?
I guess they're frantically looking for the prototype now ?
Someone is wrong on the Internet!
Is this like IBM Pixie Dust? Mmmm... soy based...
This page was generated by a Barrel of Circus Midgets, and that is the way I like it!!!
No the RIAA and MPAA are really concerned about making and hording as much money and power as possible, if they step on a few ants on the way to the gold, that's the ants problem aparently. Companies exist to make money. They do not exist to spy on the public. They do not exist to please the public. They make money, by whatever means they can get away with that produces the best results. If those means help or hinder you is no matter to them unless it means more or less $.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
You may remember that networks of small sensors figured prominently in The Peace War, also by Vernor Vinge.
Hmm, I sense a pattern here.
So exactly what are the effects of a stiff wind on smart dust? It seems to me that even a moderate wind would wreak havoc on the survellaince attempts of dust, or am I missing something?
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
George W Bush Jr Jr: It might just be paranoia, but I think that line of coke is looking at me funny.
Just one step closer to Michael Chrichton's PREY...
The enemy just needs to battle harden one of these and clear the battlefield.
"We're sorry, but the website you're trying to reach has been disconnected."
What about possible health impacts in the future? I mean, supposing that these things become ubiquitous and the military/government/corporations spread them around for various monitoring purposes, how do they get cleaned up? As technology advances and this "smart dust" gets smaller/finer, what are the implications of inhaling them? (Seems to me battlefields aren't so much of a worry; there are other things more hazardous to health on those. This would only really apply if SmartDust was used a lot for monitoring civilians.)
:)
Not to mention the fact that privacy issues (as usual) rear their ugly head once more. What happens when I pick up a bunch of these on my clothes/shoes from walking around downtown and take them back home with me? Automatic distribution of the dust, deploying a sensor network to residential neighborhoods, collecting all manner of information as the technology develops. What, will I have to install an "EMP chamber" like an airlock in my home to walk through?
Sola Scriptura * Sola Gratia * Sola Fide * Solus Christus * Soli Deo Gloria
NOWHERE TO HIDE technology. There are a bunch of presentations archived in various and sundry places that talk about this sort of thing, as well as the other elements used.
I seem to be having flashbacks of Michael Crichton's book Prey I don't see the real deal here coming any where close to the "dust" in the book, but maybe someone can start up a few rumors.
-my other sig is your mom
Reminds me of something from a Vernor Vinge novel.
-- uh...
...it would at the very least decimate the enemy by incapacitating asthmatic troops.
Modest doubt is called the beacon of the wise. - William Shakespeare
The articles never mention the power source for these things. They mention the size will eventually be mere millimeters across, but what kind of battery can you put in something that small?
And if you are restricted to a small battery (or maybe small solarcell) how much power do you have available to broadcast to the other sensors so they can talk to each other.
The technoglogy won't mean much if these things actually become 'DumbDust' after a few minutes (seconds?) of operation.
-Dubya
Has anyone read the new book Prey by Michael Crichton? This post was a bit of a shock to me... not that we are anywhere close to where he goes in the book, but much closer than I thought we were. Does anyone see a problem with making something the human eye can't see (easily) and then trying to put our best AI into it? One bee is just a Nuisance. Thousands of them working together are deadly!
Be Alert, the world needs more Lerts!
Remember the 34-byte universal machine?
We could now DDOS people with allergies. Jerry Seinfeld will have one more reason to be afraid of dirt. "It's WATCHING ME!!!". What happens if you ingested smart dust? Would they keep getting readings back through the whole process?
Also in his new novella "Fast Times at Fairmont High" that won this years Hugo. Also a great story.
...feed false data into the network
That's it exactly. All you'd need as a countermeasure is to sprinkle your own dust over the same area programmed with some variant of an "internet worm", and (presto change-o) the original dust will get real confused.
Gives a new meaning to the phrase "OS wars".
We're from Berkeley, man. While sensor networks can be used for killing people better, that's not what motivates me in this research.
Okay... so basically, we're talking about particle sized sensors and a built-in networking capability. Sensors meaning heat, sound, light, and whatever else they need to orient themselves like GPS, orientation, etc.
So what's to prevent people from spreading this stuff in public washrooms/baths/changing rooms to spy on people while they undress?
What's to prevent this from being sprinkled onto unsuspecting passerbys and used to basically stalk them and their children?
What's to prevent this from being used on ATM machines or any other place where sensitive information needs to be kept secret from prying eyes and people who seek to commit fraud?
What's to prevent people from using this to gain insider information by spreading it in corporate meeting and board rooms while they are visiting, at production factories during a tour, or even at random hotel rooms for the heck of it?
What's to prevent the abuse of this technology?
I'm not saying the technology doesn't have great and beneficial uses. Military and Security uses come to mind. As does scientific research and observation. It can go a great way to help prevent spousal abuse and domestic violence, tell us when children ARE being abused or if fraud is being committed. It can even help to serve as an effective way of adding home security without all of the cameras. And help to monitor the weak and sickly who might otherwise not be monitored effectively through normal means.
I'm just left wondering whether or not this is a tool/technology which will essentially erradicate privacy.
Winged Power Photography
You mean the US hasn't yet reached it's nadir? Man, that is scary!
I spent a little time wondering what it would be like living in a world with total surveilence - a world where someone could be watching or at least recording everything that happens. In some respects it doesn't actually look that bad.
No one would would be in any doubt about whether or not Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. No crime would go unsolved. No one would expect to get away with cheating on their spouse. Lying in general would become far less common. There just wouldn't be much to lie about which couldn't be verified by someone who wanted to.
Of course you would have to get used to the idea that six billion people could, if they wanted to, watch you take a dump every morning. But somehow I suspect that the excitement of voyerism would wear off if every act became a public act. Who knows, maybe we would all be happier if there was no longer any point in maintaining a public mask to cover our private lives.
I worried at first that total surveilence would lend itself too well to totalitarianism. "No crime would go unsolved" really just means that if you do anything the state disapproves of then it would not go unnoticed. But then it occured to me that totalitarianism would have a hard time getting established if eveything happens in the public view. Politicians could not cut deals behind closed doors, the military could not plot coups, the state could not lie to the people about what it is doing.
Living in a world like this would be really different from living in the world as it is, and it would be uncomfortable to people like us who are used to a good deal of privacy. But it wouldn't necessarily be bad - just very different.
Of course total surveilence is not going to happen any time soon. What will happen is an increase in certain types of surveilence by certain people. The way I see it, the problem with this is that we might wind up with a world where the state can watch the people, but the people cannot watch the state, or a world where the US knows exactly what Iraq is up to, but no one knows exactly what the US is up to. This kind of world really would be bad.
So here is a suggestion. Perhaps instead of trying to stem the tide of surveilence, what we should do is try to make sure that it washes over everyone evenly. If the state has this technology, then push for the same technology to be made available to private citizens. If the state wants more information about the people, then push for a more open government, so that the people will also have more information about the state.
"I have a life philosophy of monism"
No, you have no life. End of discussion.
I wonder what the potential for hacking these networks is? If they're running on low power, low performance devices, are they going to have robust encryption?
Even if you couldn't decrypt the signals, you could detect their presence.. which leads to a bunch of potential counter-measures: jam their communications with a bunch of RF noise, sweep a microwave beam to fry their circuits, the list goes on.
Interestingly enough, fairly low tech countermeasures could be used to combat this kind of high technology.
Basically, the idea in the book was that there were swarms of these very kinds of devices that could gain self-awareness and intelligence, and formed into 3-d copies of people. They were able to mimic the actions and sound of people undetectably.
They also were able to self-replicate and other stuff, like kill people and what not. Hilarity ensued.
Anyone who hasn't read Prey and finds this interesting may be in for a good read.
Sounds familiar doesn't it. Now I want my "Young Man's Illustrated Primer". I would rather dispense with the sex and name change so I can get the Young Woman's version.
You want to read The Transparent Society, it's all about ubiquitious "eyes" and how it can be a good thing. I'm skeptical, I think people of wealth, power, and influence will always have means to keep their dealings secret and I have a great fear that privacy as we know it will be only for those who can afford it.
Boy have we come a long way. I remember when "thousands of bytes" was a TON of memory -- literally. ;)
GreyPoopon
--
Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
I recently read the new Michael Crichton book called Prey. This company had built these very small machines that had a very small "camera" on it I guess you could say. They would take millions of these very small cameras, and be able to recieve video from them, but they looked like a swarm of bees or somethin.
Pretty interesting book, i haven't been able to read the whole article yet but it sounds similar.
Despite the fact that the devices are still a ways off from being grain sized or small enough to be easily missed(dime sized?)... it still makes me worry.
The general feeling I got from the article and from the background site is that each of these are essentialy DSP units, providing the necessary filtering before sending the data back.
I'm not so much afraid that each of these little bugs would have a video camera. But I am concerned that together, they could be used to reconstruct the light they percieve and/or sounds/RF patterns.
I guess my fears stem from where I see the technology heading or could be heading.
I definitely agree with you that a high energy RF sweep would essentially disable most, if not all, of the bugs. But then again, how many of us cary tesla coils or emp pulse generators in our pockets? ^_-
Even down to the size of a dollar bill or a half dollar. You could pack a wireless bug that can broadcast 400-500 video lines worth of resolution with sound from commodity parts. These folk are working with scaled down component kits.
With a few dozen of these, it wouldn't be impossible to have them each gather a fragment of a picture and piece them back together at the main system.
Winged Power Photography
..goes to war against Swaziland in 2084 in an attempt to prevent the proliferation of Weapons of nano sized destruction....
I say cover the world with them, have all of the internet and cell phones go through them in a P2P sort of system, make a totally distributed worldwide network useing tiny grains spread over the whole world. make them small as a few cells. let them become part of the evironment, let animals eat them and absorb them into their body, a hundred thousand years from now, when humans are gone animals will evolve to use the networks cells that live in the tissues of their bodys, they will grow up as telepaths, and when they reach the level of civilization they will wonder how their mysterious power came to be, and they will decide it must have evolved that way randomly and not care very much.
-You're wasting your time. Alfador only likes me.
The CDC and similar facilities have the reverse of this - they keep the "really nasty disease" labs at a lower atmospheric pressure so that if any germs get loose or an airlock seal fails no germs will not be able to float out.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
This is absolutely cool.
The big value I see in this is in networking, and communications. Cell phone towers, tv stations, and internet backbones could in theory be replaced by spreading smart-dust arround town. The dust would automatically route from particle to particle to the correct phone, tv station, radio station, or internet IP address according to how you accessed it, and even automatically figure out the correct protocool. You wouldn't even be required to subscribe to an ISP or an pnone service provider, the dust would just route independently. if you needed more bandwidth in your connectivity, simply buy a bucket or two of smart dust and spread it arround, perhaps walk along the road and spread it arround like seed, or put it in a medium sized area and 50billion smart dusts will act and behave like a single transmitter.
other cool application I could see are painting your sterio on the wall. the smart dust in the paint would automatically configure itself to resonate and listen to your voice to tell it what radio station to listen to, it would tune to the station and then vibrate sounds accordingly in perfict coordination. the same logic could be used for painting a tv screen on the wall, where smart dust could be configured to emit coordinated frequencies of light rather than sound.
See generally the Foresight Institute, but in particular: Drexler's books. Very specifically, Engines of Creation mentions this in Chapter 11 and it was first published back in 1986:
"States could become more like organisms by dominating their parts more completely. Using replicating assemblers, states could fill the human environment with miniature surveillance devices."
Nice, huh?
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005