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

Imagine

[Ogrez]

A beowulf clu.... nevermind, my bad....

Smart Dust?

[grub]

Smart Dust? I must have the world's most powerful Beowulf cluster under my bed.

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?

Part of The Mesh

[hlovy]

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

But could we...

[Ogrez]

Shape the motes like spiders... and give them simple commands like "kill Tom Selleck"

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.

Clean Room parade?

[Noryungi]

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...

Re:Clean Room parade?

[Twirlip of the Mists]

One possible solution to protect against smart dust would to create military buildings with a high internal atmospheric pressure

This is already common practice. In most office buildings, the HVAC system is employed to maintain a slight overpressure. This has the benefit of making it less likely for foreign substances, including airborne chemical and biological agents, to enter the building from the outside. That's just a side-effect, though. The designed-in purpose is much more mundane. It's to keep ordinary dust-- the dumb kind-- out, to keep the buildings clean.

A Deepness in the Sky?

[McSpew]

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.

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? :)