‘Smart dust’ network that performs complex tasks
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Remote sensing has been taken to a whole new level
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The networks are tolerant to robot failures and work on solar power or vibrations
Sensor nodes have shrunk to a few millimetres and will cost around $10 in a few years
You cannot remember where you threw your wallet yesterday night. And you are late for office, yet again. What do you do? You sing to it! And wait for your wallet to sing back, perhaps, from behind the sofa! No, I am not out of my mind and yes, this could be possible.
If not now, soon. Let’s see how. A sensor is a device that produces a measurable impulse, usually an electrical signal, in response to a physical stimulus like heat, light, sound, pressure, motion, or even rain.
Thermometer, cameras, radar, photodiodes, microphone, barometer, rain gauge, and other such measuring devices permit this categorization.
Attach a receiver, a transmitter and a mini computer to each sensor and put them on silicon, the size of sand grain and you have what is called ‘smart dust,’ or as I prefer, magic dust. Now picture a network (or storm, if you will) of these dust particles that can self-organize and perform complex tasks by self-coordinating.
And you have the answer. Such networks are the brainchild of Professor Kris Pister of the University of California, Berkeley. Seeing the wonderful opportunity that the simultaneous growth of wireless and microelectromechanical system technology presented he envisioned networks of millions of microsensors that could coordinate with one another to perform complex tasks with minimum human intervention.
Extremely dynamic, these networks were to be tolerant to individual robot failures and were to work on power scavenged from the environment like solar power or vibrations.
Individually, each entity was useless but as a swarm they could perform complicated tasks.
This was in stark contrast to the existing sensor networks that had a few clunky sensor nodes wired to a central processing station and required careful deployment and management.
He wanted to take remote sensing into a whole new level. These swarms could be programmed to perform exploratory missions in the Amazon jungles, help your doctor remotely monitor your vital signs, seal your country’s border to infiltration, and track everything from your wallet to your IPod. Everything you owned knew you owned it!
Apart from these swarms, one could also embed the smart dusts in every object and make the entire world one huge, ubiquitous, and, happy network. And unlike the Internet, this would be a real network.
Everything in the world was smart and could interact with you. He could see that these networks, if they were built, could blur the line between reality and fiction.
Thankfully, others saw this too. The idea caught on. Funded by a $ 1.5 million DARPA grant and working with Prof. David Culler, in 1998, Pister created the first integrated sensor node that had a communication, processing and sensing unit on the same board. The only issue was it was more the size of a bottle cap, than a sand grain, and it cost a small fortune.
Of course we have come a long way since then. Sensor node sizes have shrunk to a few millimetres and they are expected to cost around $10 in a few years.
Networks have grown to include a few hundred nodes and are being deployed for diverse applications like military surveillance, environmental monitoring, health care systems and smart homes.
The MIT Enterprise Technology Review has listed wireless sensor networks as one of the top 10 technologies that could effectively change the world.
More importantly the commercial market, that is essential to sustain the interest in this technology, is expected to cross the $ 1 billion mark by 2009.
Almost every other issue of Popular Science, Discover and Wired has an article on possible applications.
Sensor networks are slowly making the transition from military-funded academic research into the development labs of multinationals like Intel, Hewlett-Packard, BP and Motorola. Start-ups are dime a dozen.
SUNDHAR RAM SRINIVASAN
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