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Smartdust are small robots used for monitoring and sensing, with potential applications in various fields. Research is well-funded, with hopes of robots as small as a speck of dust. DARPA has heavily funded research since the 1990s, with promising prototypes as small as 5mm. Smartdust can be used to monitor traffic, accompany soldiers, track activities, trace defects, and even enter human bodies. Energy use is a major research area, with minimal energy needed for communication. Development continues rapidly, with the potential for vast armies of sensors monitoring our environment.
Smartdust is a term used to describe very small groups of robots that can be used for monitoring and sensing. Currently, smartdust’s scale is quite small, with individual sensors the size of a deck of playing cards, but the hope is to eventually have robots as small as a speck of dust. Smartdust’s individual sensors are often referred to as specks due to their small size. These devices are also known as MEMS, which stands for microelectromechanical sensors.
Smartdust has theoretical applications in virtually every field of science and industry. Research into the technologies is well funded and robust, and it is generally accepted that it is simply a matter of time before smartdust can exist in a functional way. Opponents question the risks to personal privacy, but proponents believe the disadvantages are heavily outweighed by the positive benefits.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has funded smart dust research heavily since the late 1990s, seeing virtually limitless applications in the sphere of modern warfare. The research so far has been promising, with prototype smartdust sensors as small as 5 mm. Costs have fallen rapidly with technological innovations, bringing individual moticles to as low as $50 each, with hopes of falling below $1 per pellet in the near future.
The applications of these sensors are seemingly endless. Every aspect of life you examine opens new avenues for intelligent dust. Smartdust can possibly be used to monitor traffic and better direct it, to accompany soldiers and warn them of any poisons or dangerous biological substances in the air, to follow people around and track their activities, to trace defects of products when they go out from an assembly line, and even to enter human bodies and verify physiological problems.
The use of energy is a major research area in the field of smart dust. With such small devices, batteries present a huge addition in weight. It is therefore important to use absolutely minimal amounts of energy in communicating the data they collect to central hubs where it can be reached by humans.
The development of smartdust continues at breakneck speed and it will no doubt soon be commonplace to have a vast army of thousands or millions of nearly invisible sensors monitoring our environment to ensure our safety and the efficiency of the machines around us.
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