So we all know what the “next big thing” will be, right? The idea of Internet of Things (IoT) has gained a lot of tractions in the past 4 years. It definitely is an interesting concept to embed software and sensors in everyday stuff we use, physical devices, vehicles, buildings and so on (Linux, 2016).
But that’s not nearly as exciting as Smart Dust.
In the past, the term was mainly known from science-fiction authors like Stanislaw Lem or Neal Stephenson. Now it’s slowly becoming a reality. Smart Dust is defined as a system of many, tiny microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) such as sensors, robots, or other devices, that can detect, for example, temperature, light, magnetism or vibrations. The MEMS are usually operated on a computer network wirelessly and are distributed over some area to perform tasks, usually sensing through radio-frequency identification (Robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu, 2016). In simple terms just imagine a handful of sand from the beach you visited last summer. And now imagine that this sand can be controlled and gather various data points, while communicating forth and back with the server. That’s pretty much what Smart Dust in its current development phase is.
Smart Dust technology was first picked up in mass media in 2003, after being part of the Gartner Hype Cycle report, to come back this year in innovation trigger phase (Gartner, 2016).
Perhaps you are thinking now – ok, sounds futuristic, innovative and so on, but how we can actually apply smart dust in everyday life?
As representative of nanotechnology, it could be used for various medical applications, just to mention handicapped and paralyzed people using brainwaves to control robotic limbs, in a similar manner as Cathy Hutchison’s experiment proved, replacing catheters or letting scientists to see what’s going on in a human brain in a non-invasive way (Forbes, 2016). Possibly smart dust can also help to grow mind-controlled computer games or brain training apps industry and many more.
Usually with new technologies there comes also the “darker” side. Due to the sheer size of the Smart Dust and the fact that it is barely visible for an eye, the US military and other army folks put a lot of money in further research. The questions regarding the human privacy, general use frameworks will arise, but it will be immensely hard to control the use of Smart Dust (E-education, 2016).
The technology will not be commonly available tomorrow. As shown in the Gartner Hype Cycle, predicted time to mainstream adoption is more than 10 years. The technical challenges involved with Smart Dust are to create a package that includes all the elements needed to perform sensory measurements, while also being able to communicate back to a base station to gather the data. Same thing goes for the operation system; it must be properly designed to run the Smart Dust motes. University of Stanford team proposes TinyOS as a solution – an open-source system designed for low-power wireless devices, it provides useful software abstractions of the underlying device hardware (Asay et al., 2013). Despite the obstacles, with the current technology adoption rate, I am confident that in the near future we will see first commercial applications of Smart Dust.
What do you think? In which industries could Smart Dust be most beneficial and which use should make us alert?
References
Asay, M., finley, k., Asay, M., 1, j., barden, b. and Power, D. (2013). Connected Air: Smart Dust Is The Future Of The Quantified World – ReadWrite. [online] ReadWrite. Available at: http://readwrite.com/2013/11/14/what-is-smartdust-what-is-smartdust-used-for/ [Accessed 2 Oct. 2016].
E-education.psu.edu. (2016). Technology Trends – Smart Dust and Sensor Networks | GEOG 583: Geospatial System Analysis and Design. [online] Available at: https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog583/node/77 [Accessed 1 Oct. 2016].
Forbes.com. (2016). Forbes Welcome. [online] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseackerman/2013/07/19/how-smart-dust-could-be-used-to-monitor-human-thought/#46110e331499 [Accessed 1 Oct. 2016].
Gartner.com. (2016). Gartner’s 2016 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies Identifies Three Key Trends That Organizations Must Track to Gain Competitive Advantage. [online] Available at: https://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3412017 [Accessed 1 Oct. 2016].
Linux.com | The source for Linux information. (2016). 21 Open Source Projects for IoT. [online] Available at: https://www.linux.com/NEWS/21-OPEN-SOURCE-PROJECTS-IOT [Accessed 1 Oct. 2016].
