Smart Bricks to Monitor Buildings of the Future

Roland Piquepaille writes "Scientists from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed a "smart brick" which can monitor a building's health and report its conditions wirelessly. "This innovation could change the face of the construction industry," said Chang Liu, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Illinois. "We are living with more and more smart electronics all around us, but we still live and work in fairly dumb buildings. By making our buildings smarter, we can improve both our comfort and safety." Built into a wall, these bricks could monitor a building's temperature, vibration and movement. Such information could be vital to firefighters battling a blazing skyscraper, or to rescue workers ascertaining the soundness of an earthquake-damaged structure. These researchers also think these devices could help monitoring nurseries, daycares and senior homes. You'll find more details in this summary."

Comments

Re:Interesting, but...

[irexe]

firefighters aren't going to have time to jack in to a network plug when they're trying to save lives.

They do actually, or at least they try. They even have time to watch streaming video and infrared sensors. Had you thought your post through a bit, you could have imagined yourself that it obviously pays to know a hazardous situation inside out before you send in more bodies.

The other touted use it to sense vibrations. I don't know about you, but I know when there's an earthquake and when there's not, I don't need a brick to tell me.

I don't know about your specific seismic abilities of course, but for us mortals 'feeling' an earthquake usually means it is too late. That is why so many peopple still die of them. I'm not saying these bricks will solve the problem of early earthquake detection, but they at least stand a better chance at it than you do.

In short, useless waste of money marketing FUD. Per norm for slashdot stories.

(Offtopic)

FUD has become a very easy label to stick on articles people don't like, but it really makes no sense at all in this context, does it? Just as a reminder: you don't have to read the slashdot stories you don't like, o.k.? Just don't piss on a technology because you are not interested in reading about it.