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