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