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."

Comments

Dusting of sensors

[Alcohol Fueled]

"The idea was to sprinkle thousands of tiny wireless sensors on a battlefield to monitor enemy movements without alerting the enemy to their presence."

If the enemy ever did find out their presence, couldn't they use some kind of microwaves or something to disable the sensors?

Re:Dusting of sensors

[artemis67]

And detecting their presence wouldn't be that hard. Simple electronics would notice a large ammount of radiation being emitted from an empty field.

Even simpler than that, I would image. If you've got thousands or tiny systems operating independently out there and chatting on the network, and they suddenly all fell silent, then you have a pretty good idea that something is going on.

Although, I suppose a really sophisticated army could capture all of the network chatter for, say, half an hour, then zap the sensors.

To fool the network, just play back the network chatter with updated headers on all of the packets with an updated time stamp.

Re:Dusting of sensors

[drinkypoo]

Several points on this. By the time we see any civilian applications (Maybe you'll use them for motion capture of groups?) the military will be using them with point to point communications. Second, you could use the same laser/pickup combo for communication that you use for sensing, with infrared lasers. It won't work all that well during the day -- you'll only get a very short range. You can use them for point to point communication. This currently implies fairly sizable motes, however.

Also the more of them you sprinkle the less power they need to use because they are a mesh network, they only have to talk to their neighbors. I would assume that motes would always be operating in least-power modes anyway, so they will be using as little power as possible when sending signals. I suspect it will be less trivial to pick this up than you think. Using MEMS technology today and nanotechnology tomorrow (but tomorrow never seems to come) you will be easily able to construct positionable directional antennae enough to where motes could reasonably do point to point communication and be near impossible to detect without being within their area of effect.

Part of The Mesh

[hlovy]

It's another step toward The Mesh, covered very well in a Small Times cover package last year.

I can see it now.

[Some Bitch]

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?

That's kinda frightening

[terrencefw]

The surveillance power of this kind of thing is pretty damn scary, assuming they perfect it. Of course, it's got defense applications, so of course they're going to develope it.

If we had this tehcnology now, we could sprinkle a load over Iraq to detect chemical weapons residues and radiation above background levels.

Health impacts?

[The Masked Fruitcake]

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? :)

Sample civilan app

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Great Duck Island

We're from Berkeley, man. While sensor networks can be used for killing people better, that's not what motivates me in this research.