Smart dust gets smaller and more intelligent

If you are looking for the next disruptive technology headed for the enterprise: think dust. No, not small grains of sand, soot or dirt but similarly sized particles that have a brain.   Smart dust, a sensor technology, could usher in a tidal wave of changes in the way people do business, or track items or people. These tiny wireless microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS) can transmit important information like air quality, temperature, humidity, light or vibrations. And, that’s just the beginning.

If you are looking for the next disruptive technology headed for the enterprise: think dust. No, not small grains of sand, soot or dirt but similarly sized particles that have a brain. 

Smart dust, a sensor technology, could usher in a tidal wave of changes in the way people do business, or track items or people. These tiny wireless microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS) can transmit important information like air quality, temperature, humidity, light or vibrations. And, that’s just the beginning.

A group of these tiny remote sensors can form into a two-way mesh radio network where devices communicate with each other.  They could track the movements of visitors as they move from place to place within your corporate headquarters. Other applications such as pinpointing structural weaknesses in a building after an earthquake, or warning of the presence of biochemical toxins, are almost ready for prime time.

Smart dust particles, called “motes,” could be as small as the size of a grain of sand. Thanks to advances in silicon and fabrication techniques and the promise of what sensor technology can do, smart dust is starting to attract a lot of attention these days.

Much of the early work to create tiny devices came from the University of California at Berkeley, where the TinyOS was originally designed. This open source platform has become the standard for many smart dust sensors. 

The motes’ hardware platform uses Processor/Radio boards (MPR). These are battery-powered devices where MTS (sensors that can sense for light, temperature, and contain a microphone and a buzzer) and MDA (data card sensors that can measure light, relative humidity, or act as a general purpose interface for external sensors) work directly with the Mote Processor/Radio boards.

Sensor support is provided either by direct sensing or by using external sensors. Crossbow Technologies, one of the early pioneers, already distributes tiny sensor devices that can collect data to monitor the environment.

This month the company plans to announce new products with GPS capabilities.

A year ago, the size of smart dust was about 2 millimeters cubed – smaller than a piece of glitter. An innovation, called Spec, became the first to integrate sensors and transmitters onto a single tiny platform. This opens a platform for a device that senses and communicates on a single chip.

Researchers last year tested Spec at the Intel Research Laboratory in Berkeley. Spec was able to transmit radio signals at 902 MHz over 40 feet at 19200K bit/sec. Its radio transmitters used 1,000 times less the power of a cell phone.

Today, smart dust particles are down to 1 millimeter cubed and can contain sensors, computing circuits, bidirectional wireless communications technology and a power supply. In some cases, a two-way band radio at distances of 1,000 feet between motes could gather all types of data, run computations and communicate that information. Battery life is up to five or more years and certain types of smart dust can use renewable power, such as solar or wind.

The promise of smart dust is both incredible and scary.  A few years ago, when the sensors were the size of a matchbook, a test application successfully tracked the speed and ground vibrations of vehicles in Twentynine Palms, Calif. The sensors were dropped from a plane alongside a road and began transmitting the information.

Very soon, smart dust particles easily could be able to detect people and their locations. It wouldn’t be too difficult to imagine releasing smart dust particles that would land on people’s hair and transmit back the DNA and location of everyone they find.

Certainly, an imaginative mind can take the potential smart dust applications to wonderful and horrifying uses. But one thing is for sure, this technology is here, it’s getting more sophisticated, and it is unlikely that anyone (i.e. government officials, scientists, etc.) can or will restrain smart dust. This genie is out of the bottle.

Cheryl Currid is president of Currid & Company.  You can write to her at mailto:Cheryl@currid.com