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

Brick

[Luigi30]

Will it shoot out gas when someone graffitis it?

Interesting, but...

[Keri Immos]

This could be a very expensive and useless technology. The proposal for it and the quote by the professor who apparently invented it are reflective of the brick's function as more of a "black box", as in an airplane, rather than a useful tool. If the brick says the buildings about to fall, what can the owners do? The excuse that it helps firefighters is totally ridiculous, firefighters aren't going to have time to jack in to a network plug when they're trying to save lives. 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.

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

Re:Interesting, but...

[Timesprout]

If the brick says the buildings about to fall, what can the owners do?

Get on the phone to their brokers and triple their insurance policy

Re:Interesting, but...

[morbuz]

If the brick says the buildings about to fall, what can the owners do?

Get a good assurance really quick?

Re:Interesting, but...

[hubenshtein]

I'm sure you could get insurance benefits for your building provided it was built with such bricks.

Re:Interesting, but...

[SagSaw]

If the brick says the buildings about to fall, what can the owners do?

I think the idea would be to detect movement of the brick relative to other parts of the building. This would allow the owner to detect and have the opportunity to correct any structural problems well before the building is in any danger of collapse.

The excuse that it helps firefighters is totally ridiculous, firefighters aren't going to have time to jack in to a network plug when they're trying to save lives.

Remember, not everybody who works for a fire department rushes into burning buildings to save people. Some people at the scene are going to set up a command center. Presumably, the command center would be equipped to monitor such 'smart' building materials and relay important information to firefighters in the building.

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.

After a major earthquake occurs, buildings need to be inspected to determine how much structrual damage has occured. Knowing the magnitude and direction of the vibrations sensed at various parts of the building could help the damage assessment process.

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.

Re:Interesting, but...

[ramk13]

I think you haven't really considered all the uses the researcher was discussing. Obviously if something catastropic happens, you are going to be able to get the general picture by standing outside. (fire, earthquake, etc.) But if there is a fire in a building, where is the fire? How long has it been burning? Is it safe to go in? After the fire, is the structure still sound? Were the materials degraded by heat? Embedded sensors can answer these types of questions, and if integrated correctly with the existing emergency systems, can easily save lives and in the long run probably save money. By getting a better picture of what condition a structure is in you can make better decisions on what need to be done to that structure (without having to make rough estimates afterwards).

Granted embedding sensors is not a new concept, putting them in bricks is a new idea, and if it can be done cost effectively and reliably, it could be useful someday. Nobody said all ideas work, but don't write it off until it's actually been looked at in detail. That's why it's university research and not the product of a company. If it is a good idea we'll see it in 5, 10 or 15 years. If it's crap, it won't succeed.

Calling it a 'useless waste of money marketing FUD' without looking at the big picture is the norm for slashdot comments.

Re:Interesting, but...

[monkey_jam]

Did you think of the possibility of embedding wireless thermometers/motion sensors/microphones in them so that in the event of a building collaps, you have a small sensor network listening for signs of life?


I'm claiming prior art on this one.

Re:Interesting, but...

[blibbleblobble]

"If the brick says the buildings about to fall, what can the owners do?

Get on the phone to their brokers and triple their insurance policy"

Hopefully before the brick gets on the phone to your insurance company and triples the price of insurance...

Re:Interesting, but...

[LaCosaNostradamus]

Your assertions are currently well enough covered by good old expertise and shoe leather. Buildings tend to already have inspection systems known as superintendents, or facilities departments with workers and a manager. Cheaper and more reliable options for inspection can and ARE being fulfilled with periodic Human involvement and sensors. This would still be the case with so-called automated sensors ... as you well know, data doesn't inspect itself; somebody has to look at it.

The "smart brick" is a OK idea that unfortunately will be touted as a wholesale replacement for current, perfectly functional systems. Temperature, vibration and movement doesn't have to be measured by some expensive high-tech brick, but can be measured by other systems already extant in the building, which can be added later and also moved around as needed.

Really, this brick thingie is another fine indicator of our cultural sickness in which we think that technology is the magic pill that makes for a better life. To arrest the disease of technophilia, we need to recognize two things:

1. Tech tends to best fulfill niche markets ... under the Principle of Limited Applicability.
2. The fork and spoon at the dinner table simply can't be replaced with a better system not matter how sexy the tech behind it ... under the Principle of Maximum Optimization.

Damn. THer goes one of my favorite expression

[Unknown Poltroon]

I guess i cant use "Dumb as a half pile of bricks" anymore.

wait a min...

[3ryon]

Such information could be vital to firefighters battling a blazing skyscraper...

Finally, a solution for all of those brick skyscrapers.

Hehe Smart Bricks

[executebusiness.com]

"Smart bricks" invented this technology! I can just picture the board meeting where they sat around talking about how they could sell bricks for $220 USD ea.

Joking asside, construction material that provides feedback is likely better than construction material that does nothing but watch the paint flake.

Re:Hehe Smart Bricks

[xphread]

construction material that provides feedback is likely better than construction material that does nothing but watch the paint flake

Yeah, thats a job for managers.

Re:Hehe Smart Bricks

[jakobk]

At a highschool where I live, they bought special bricks for â150 each. And at the hichschool I attend, â9M are being spent to remove toxic PCBs. So yes, people are willing to waste money in this way.

Just a form factor readjustment of old tech.

[Peter Cooper]

The problem with technologies like these are that they're simply form factor adjustments of existing technologies.

Currently you can very easily put temperature sensors (or even seismic detectors) in a building, but this project wants to put these items into a brick with a wireless connection. Is this really a story? Sure, such a brick might exist in every new building in the future, but you could have this in your home right now, in a small box containing the same gadgets. Putting it in a brick just doesn't seem that exiting, y'know?

This is like the 'building a PC without a case' stories we see from time to time, but without the humor value of seeing someone mount a motherboard in a cardboard box.

It's the apocolypse, people!

[Mr. Grimm]

First we give buildings the ability to feel. Then we let them think. Twenty years from now houses are eating families after they don't get the foundation fixed quick enough. Stop the madness!

mark of the brick

[freedommatters]

hey, it's this bit that gets me "These researchers also think these devices could help monitoring nurseries, daycares and senior homes"

how long before they are in ALL homes by law?

it's biblical. remember that bit about no one being able to buy or sell without the mark of the beast?

it was a bad translation, they meant mark of the brick - the one that says "quality bricks designed to last"

john
are you a weapon of male destruction? you need one of these snazzy t-shirts

maintenance

[Orgasmatron]

Bricks can last for literally hundreds of years with little to no maintenance. Anyone want to put bets on the lifetimes of these worthless gadgets?

Re:maintenance

[Have Blue]

If they can be externally powered (like RFID chips on a larger scale), and use solid-state technology that, as greenpeace loves to point out, is not biodegradable, then they can probably last for quite a while.

Ahh....the real reason for IPv6

[bravehamster]

Let's see....IPv6 should give us enough IP addresses so every brick can have their own address. Hope the building doesnt stop you from moving from one area to the other if you set your subnet wrong.

Destined for failure:

[Asprin]

Wow, it's gonna suck upgrading all of those when new a kernel comes out.

inflexible

[SuperBanana]

Built into a wall, these bricks could monitor a building's temperature, vibration and movement.

...and built into a wall, there's no way to fix the 'brick' when it breaks down and stops working. All of the above functions can be performed by sensors ON the wall,floor, ceiling, etc- or post-construction inside the wall, accessible via an access panel. Or you can make a brick that's not completely 'built in'- ie, you make a place for it, a box or something- and the sensor can still be serviced, you still get advantages of easy installation, etc.

So maybe you put a slew of them in-I suppose ease of installation counters the increased cost of deploying more of them. But still, that's great- now you've raised the chances that one of them will fail(since there are more of them)...and they're possibly more unreliable, and accuracy or precision will be worse since, well, you made 'em cheaper.

Reinventing the Wheel

[d'fim]

Why not just add sensors to the existing power and/or data infrastructure? Like the safety device vendors are already doing? Bricks could be used to supplement that, but using these bricks in place of existing technology seems silly.

Re:Damn. THer goes one of my favorite expression

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess i cant use "Dumb as a half pile of bricks" anymore.

If the bricks end up running "Microsoft Windows for Brick Computing" as their OS, you still might be able to.

Now when the walls talk to me,

[Stephen Samuel]

I can't actually be sure I'm insane.

Re:Damn. THer goes one of my favorite expression

[bj8rn]

If they were really smart bricks, they would escape from the construction site before getting laid in the wall. But I guess you should still stop using this expression, as you're probably overusing it anyway.

Favorite quote

[serutan]

"In the gaming industry, wireless sensors attached to a personâ(TM)s arms and legs could replace the conventional joystick and allow a âcouch potatoâ(TM) to get some physical exercise while playing video games such as basketball or tennis."

I get it. Sort of like if they got off the couch and played the actual sport. Uh...

Re:I'm waiting for Smart Brick 2.0

[rkz]

and Smartbrick 3.11 which adds networking for small groups

this is perfect

[the_2nd_coming]

so not a hacker or the government can egt inside out homes and monitor our activities.....and law enforcment does not even need to bug a house they can just hack into the bricks.

I heard that, but you wanted it that way.

[twitter]

Finally, a solution for all of those brick skyscrapers.

It's called a curtian wall. It's not structrually bearing, but cinder blocks might be the cheapest way to do it. When you put them around a fire escape, they can keep you from cooking as fast.

I'm not sure I want "vibration" sensors in my walls for the local police department, nosy neighbors or anyone else to listen to. My voice is a "vibration" and what I say in my house and place of work is for those around me, not big brother.

Grandma was right

[Embedded Geek]

Whenever she was concerned about being overheard, my Grandam would caution us: The walls have ears.

Who knew - the old girl was right.

IN SOVIET RUSSIA

[Eric Destiny]

in soviet russia, smart bricks monitor yoU!

Cinder blocks

[ajs318]

Only one problem with cinder blocks ..... they are actually somewhat inflammable. The value of the energy in power plant ash is less than the cost of recovering it {though one would expect newer plants to make a better job of getting all the heat out of the coal} ..... but if you heat it up hot enough, it will start to undergo a chemical reaction with air ..... in other words, go on fire .....

Oblig: Beowulf Cluster...

[Anonymous Coward]

- Imagine a Beowulf Cluster of those things!
- Dude, its called a *wall*

your area of expertise is showing

[skepton]

If you look at the vibrations coming out of a building that is burning there is a huge jump in the amplitude of certain bands right before the building collapses.. there's basically a shift in the fundamental frequency of the building. A brick to detect this is gonna save alot of firefighters.

Basically, any structure like a bridge or a building can be characterized pretty well by its frequency response. You stimulate it with an impulse and transform the output to the frequency domain. A burning building is being constantly stimulated, so detecting the vibrations with a brick in the wall is going to let you easily determine the frequency response.

As you can imagine (this is a generalization) if there's a large spike in certain frequencies, the structure is unstable. When you engineer structures, you try and keep the frequency response flat.

Reletive Delta

[inKubus]

Unless a brick can report its actual position and orientation in 3D space along with any delta since is was laid (better be none) you can't tell anymore about "settling damage" than with a visual inspection. But GPS down to the fraction of a centimeter is beyond what the military has access to.

What about relative deltas. IE, you have 1000 bricks stacked up, and you monitor all of them. The wall starts bowing inward. If the bricks are capable of communicating with neighboring bricks and measuring how they are moving relative to each other, the problem is solved.

If you add up all of the individual deltas, brick to brick, you end up with a curve which represents the total movement of the wall.. You wouldn't even need a fixed reference, although that would be useful to relate your new data to other external objects, like the earth, or another wall, or the roof..

Voices Make VIbrations

[nurb432]

SO it would be rather easy to monitor conversations in buildings.

Especially when there is more then one brick, then you could triangulate the speaker, and filter out noise. And report back any 'suspicious conversations, even in a private home.

Then add the ability to track the chips that will eventually be implanted in people, then you got instant 'undesirable' tracking in every building.

I feel so much safer now. Don't you?

What are the odds?

[ccnull]

What are the odds that, 50 years from the time the bricks are installed, the technology will still be around to access the data from the brick? The information will probably be most useful once the building really starts to decay -- if this technology had been around 50 years in the past, we'd all still need room-sized mainframes in order to access the data our buildings are providing us -- or, failing that, we'd need to rip out all the smart bricks and upgrade them with new ones. Either way, $$$... The wireless technology alone will be obsolete within 3-5 years, I'm sure.

Just a thought...