Smart Dust: The Sensors That Track Every Thing, Everywhere
The idea of the Internet of Things is so passé. The general concept of the Internet of Things is that we can put a sensor on anything and have it send data back to a database through the Internet. In this way, we can monitor everything, everywhere and build smarter systems that are more interactive than ever before.
Putting sensors on stuff? Boring. What if the sensors were in the air, everywhere? They could monitor everything — temperature, humidity, chemical signatures, movement, brainwaves — everything.
The technology is called Smart Dust and it’s not quite as crazy (or as new) as you might think.
Smart Dust as a concept originated out of a research project by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Research And Development Corporation (RAND) in the early 1990s. We use the military anecdote above because it was these military research groups that first conceptualized Smart Dust but the practical application of the technology can be applied to almost any industry. Dust in the fields monitoring the crops. Dust in the factories monitoring the output of machines. Dust in your body monitoring your entire state of well being. Dust in the forests tracking animal migration patterns, wind, and…
