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"Smart Dust" to Explore Planets

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the new-but-not dept.

Ollabelle writes "The BBC is reporting how tiny chips with flexible skins could be used to glide through a planet's atmosphere in swarms to gather data and report back. 'The idea of using millimetre-sized devices to explore far-flung locations is nothing new, but Dr Barker and his colleagues are starting to look in detail at how it might be achieved. The professor at Glasgow's Nanoelectronics Research Centre told delegates at the Royal Astronomical Society gathering that computer chips of the size and sophistication required to meet the challenge already existed.'"

15 of 85 comments (clear)

  1. Goo by Ajehals · · Score: 4, Insightful
    ...tiny chips with flexible skins could be used to glide through a planet's atmosphere in swarms to gather data and report back...

    Replace "gather data" with "decimate indigenous life" and "report back" with "multiply exponentially", and you have either a classic horror movie or an Iain Banks novel.

    Actually its quite scary either way... grey goo anyone?

    1. Re:Goo by TheLazySci-FiAuthor · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I can easily replace "decimate indigenous life" with "aid indigenous life" and "multiply exponentially" with "respect nature" and suddenly we have nano-environmentalists.

      Do we still have a problem if the goo is green?

      Your concerns are valid in general, but this does not strike me as persuasive argument for this particular technological instance.

      --
      Read my Very Short "Stories"
    2. Re:Goo by SkWaSH · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I just finished reading 'Prey' by Michael Crichton. This stuff scares me now. Of course who would ever be stupid enough to make bad decisions in order to meet big deadlines? Nobody ever does that!

  2. We can't be content just polluting our own planet? by KWTm · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So, not being satisfied with having our waste strewn across just our own planet, now we're going to introduce the rest of the solar system to our All-Products-Are-Disposable culture? Or are these micro chip/probes going to clean up after themselves and come back to Earth?

    --
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    [GPG key in journal]
  3. This project is doomed by Timesprout · · Score: 4, Funny

    When they get to the Dyson planet in the Hoover nebula.

    --
    Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
    What truth?
    There is no dupe
  4. Expensive Proposition by ShorePiper82 · · Score: 2

    Seems like a very costly operation to me. These chips could be used to report back on data on a calm atmosphere and produce recurring feedback if their signal strength is significant enough. The other case (and more costly operation is) where they are instantly destroyed by say 800mph gas / electricity storms and the best feedback you could hope for is possibly wind sweep pattern / storm strength (useful in its own right but the chips would probably be damaged before suitable data is collected).

  5. How did you get modded up by WindBourne · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Look, even if we deploy 1 million of these spread out on Mars, I doubt that you would even find one if you looked for 10 years. There is more "pollution" (in terms of weight) that comes in via meteorites over a month, then would be in these million. Don't believe it? Then look closely at the moon and Martian surface. Those holes are not there just to look pretty.

    --
    I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
    1. Re:How did you get modded up by StrahdVZ · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I am sure that is what the Europeans who arrived on Australia and other pacific islands thought... right before they inadvertently introduced smallpox and decimated the populations. Or lets not forget the cats on ships whose kittens became the feral creatures that decimate local wildlife. Even the smallest outside influence can affect the function of a balanced system. Humans are a stupid people and we have a history of doing stupid things.

    2. Re:How did you get modded up by drsquare · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Planets are not balanced systems, they're lifeless hellholes. A few chips falling on them won't hurt.

  6. Poor Martians by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Funny

    First we crash probes into their neighborhoods, then we put skid-marks all over the place with our wheel-dragging rovers, now we aggravate their allergies.

    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  7. Re:Micro-rovers by Bozdune · · Score: 2, Informative

    I wonder why JPL keeps focusing on a few big Mars rovers instead of lots of small ones.

    Maybe because it costs so damn much to get a payload to Mars, you might as well send a payload that's going to pay back. Sojourner was only designed to last 7 days; and even after 83 days it had only traveled 100 meters. Compared to what the big rovers have accomplished, Sojourner was a joke.

    You need a big vehicle with big wheels or tracks and a complex suspension system to navigate around a rock-strewn plain, which by the way seems to pretty much describe the entire planet. A skateboard with a solar panel on top won't get very far.

  8. Re:Micro-rovers by Tablizer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Maybe because it costs so damn much to get a payload to Mars, you might as well send a payload that's going to pay back.

    Why would 12 microrovers cost more than one big rover? (The next one under preparation is much bigger than even Spirit.)

    Sojourner was only designed to last 7 days; and even after 83 days it had only traveled 100 meters.


    I meant Sojourner-sized, not Sojourner technology. Sojourner relied on a separate lander to send messages back, and thus couldn't wonder far. We don't need that. I am thinking that microprobes could do without a contact spectrometer. Use only remote-sensing spectrometers. That way more weight can be devoted to orbiter communications.

    You need a big vehicle with big wheels or tracks and a complex suspension system to navigate around a rock-strewn plain


    Only if you want to go relatively fast and fear fatal mistakes. If a microrover gets stuck or scratched, it gets stuck or scratched. The slowness of Spirit and Oppy is largey due to risk aversion.

    I am not against larger rovers, only saying we need both types. One large rover and a batch of 12 micro-rovers would probably be more scientifically useful than 2 big rovers because a bunch can survey more diverse areas of Mars.
    --
    Table-ized A.I.
  9. battery by dominious · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder if the demand for collecting and distributing data in real time would be feasible with such small
    batteries. Battery lifetime is a challenge itself for smart dust, what happens when the application requires
    data to be transmitted all the time in order to monitor changes constatly, how long would the nodes last? In
    battlefields there's no need to transmit data unless something happens, like an explosion will trigger an event.

    Anyhow, this is a great idea and makes a very good project!

  10. Re:whew, I thought you were going to say... by Farmer+Tim · · Score: 2, Funny

    Imagine a Beowulf cloud of these...

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    Blank until /. makes another boneheaded UI decision.
  11. Attribution?! by tcmoore4 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Kris Pister, an EECS professor in MEMS at Berkeley, coined the term "Smart Dust" and has done a ton of work on it. I remember him mentioning the goals of the project in a class in 1999, and he touched upon all the accomplishments mentioned in the article, most of which were achieved. If you search on "Smart Dust" in Google, his research project site is the first that comes up. So how can their be no mention of Pister, his research, his company "Dust Networks", or Berkeley in the entire article? http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~pister/SmartDus t/ Just wondering.