Disadvantages of SmartDust

The one main concern with SmartDust, spanning all industries and functional areas, is without a doubt privacy. Detecting even the most subtle changes, SmartDust leaves little to the imagination. While young people are more accustomed to being monitored, older people may regard SmartDust as scary and intrusive, possibly even harmful. Privacy is likely going to be an ongoing and difficult debate in the coming years, and SmartDust may be right at its center.

Are there any other disadvantages to using SmartDust? It is hard to think of any, but another main disadvantage at the moment is its high cost. SmartDust technology is very expensive to research, to produce, and to manufacture. Until costs go down, which they will in a few years, SmartDust may not be a viable option for organizations. However, when that time does come, the dawn of the SmartDust revolution will begin, and will usher in an unprecedented era of technology and advancement.

References:

http://www.e-core.org.uk/content/smart_dust/smart.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartdust

http://www.innovationwatch.com/choiceisyours/choiceisyours.2006.12.15.htm

Advantages of SmartDust

In this post ill be discussing the actual and potential advantages that organizations may benefit from if they choose to use SmartDust. Taken directly from Kris Pister's website (the conceptualizer of SmartDust), he mentions 3 main benefits for organizations:

1. Dramatically reduce systems and infrastructure costs
2. Increase plant/factory/office productivity
3. Improve safety, efficiency and compliance

Let's take a look at factories and plants for example. In this field, SmartDust has the most useful applications, such as:

• detecting corrosion in aging pipes before they leak and cost huge amounts of money to repair
• automating many manual error-prone tasks which involve calibration and monitoring
  
• providing accurate data of motor health in order to perform more timely maintenance when needed
  
• having most instruments become wireless and even be able to recalibrate, reconfigure and upgrade them wirelessly
• monitoring power consumption to better understand where most energy is being used which would help plants save money in the long run.

In an office environment, SmartDust could also prove invaluable, and have the potential to be used in such applications as:

• eliminating wired routers entirely, and replacing them with a single SmartDust chip which would handle all hardware and software functions for distributed networks, using five times less power than conventional networks
• tracking the movements of visitors as they roam around the office to see if they are going into any restricted locations, or to let the CEO know what they are up to
• tracking important packages leaving the offices (SmartDust nodes can even be equipped with GPS receivers!)

The uses of SmartDust are so numerous and wide-ranging that it would take pages and pages to mention them all. It has much potential in the fields of medicine, agriculture, dentistry, etc. and we've only begun to tap into that potential. Make sure to visit again soon as ill be talking apout the disadvantages SmartDust may have for organizations.

References:
http://www.dustnetworks.com/
http://www.innovationwatch.com/choiceisyours/choiceisyours.2006.12.15.htm
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/techexec/2004/0607techexec1.html?page=2

Takeover

The future of SmartDust is looking very bright. It has a limitless potential to replace and/or improve many existing technologies. In this post ill be giving a few examples of the technologies SmartDust could soon be taking over. The picture i've chosen is an artist's rendition of what a SmartDust mote used to enter the human body might one day look like.

• Keyboards: Kris Pister, who conceptualized SmartDust, says of the matter: "a smart-dust mote stuck to each fingernail could allow finger movements in the air to be transmitted to a computer. With this technology, computers could get even smaller, and air guitar would no longer be just a fantasy of rock-star wannabes. If the computer knows where your fingers are: sculpt 3D shapes in virtual clay, play the piano, gesture in sign language and have to computer translate. Combined with a MEMS augmented-reality heads-up display, your entire computer I/O would be invisible to the people around you. Couple that with wireless access and you need never be bored in a meeting again! Surf the web while the boss rambles on and on."
• Forest fires: When SmartDust becomes affordable enough to mass produce, SmartDust sensors could be strewn about forests, and sensing changes in temperature (fires!!!), could alert each other which in turn would alert a central station. The operator at the station could then locate the first mote that sent the signal, and send firefighters to fight the fire in its relatively early stages.
• Street lights: When street lights go out, power companies usually wait for a customer to call or go out and survey street light themselves. But with SmartDust, the company can be alerted directly when a light goes out, which would result in savings for the company and better satisfaction for the populace.
• Military: SmartDust could have many applications in the military, replacing costly equipment such as cameras and spy robots. SmartDust could be strewn about an area to detect intruders and any heat-emitting weapons they may be carrying, and can be used to monitor an area after the army has left.

The possibilities are endless. Recently, there was an article in the news talking about how SmartDust may be used to explore outer space in the future. How cool is that?

References:
http://www.innovationwatch.com/choiceisyours/choiceisyours.2006.12.15.htm
http://www.uhisrc.com/FTB/Smart%20Dust/Smart%20Dust.pdf
http://arjuna.newcastle.ac.uk/research/projects/detail.php?id=218

SmartDust?

What is SmartDust? You may have heard this word somewhere and might be asking what exactly SmartDust is. Quite simply, it is a powerful new technology that might shape our future in ways never thought imaginable. Think of your computer that you are using right now. Now think of that same computer, fitted into the dimensions of an American quarter.
Thats roughly what SmartDust, also known as a microelectromechanical sensor (MEMS) is. These little devices can have many useful applications such as:

• sensing humidity in a field and activating spinklers when humidity drops below a certain level
• tracking patient movements in a hospital room through sensors
• entering the human body to check for physiological problems (!)
• tracking birds, animals and insects for study
  
• detecting manufacturing defects in an assembly line through out-of-range vibrations

SmartDust devices can compute and sense information, and also relay their data to other devices and computers. Grouped together, many of these little devices can share their information on a wide scale and provide accurate cluster data to a mainframe device. The possibilities are endless.
In my next post, ill be talking about what technologies SmartDust is likely to replace in the coming years.
Stay tuned!


For additional information on SmartDust, howstuffworks.com has a great article on the subject:
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/mote1.htm

References:
http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,10801,79572,00.html
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-smart-dust.htm
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/11/061114-smart-dust.html