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...

[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...

[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...

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.

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!

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?

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.

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.

Re:I'm waiting for Smart Brick 2.0

[rkz]

and Smartbrick 3.11 which adds networking for small groups

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.

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.