Smart Dust

The idea of Smart Dust although originally depicted in science fiction movies, was officially introduced in 1998 by dr. Kris Pister of the UC berkeley (Hsu, Kahm, and Pister 1998; Eisenberg 1999). Pister wanted to build an all in one sensor, communication, and micro computer device. This devices are called "Motes", the existing motes are of the size of a stack of coins the smallest and have one or more sensing capabilities (light, temperature, etc.) a power supply and most importantly a communication system.  But why is it called dust? well that's were it gets interesting... although it hasn't been achieved yet the tendency is to reduce the dimensions of this motes to the size of a grain of sand or dust. previously I mentioned the importance of motes having an integrated communication system usually wireless, why is this so important? well I'm glad you asked.... although a mote of the size of a grain of sand would be pretty impressive in itself it would render quite useless as a stand alone piece of equipment, the magic begins when you have thousands of this motes lying or even flying around forming a self organising network that collects and transmits al kinds of information through it.

Sources:

image from: The New York Times Article http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/31/technology/31ibm.html?ref=technology.

Smart Dust. (March, 2005). UH ISRC Technology Briefing. http://www.uhisrc.com/FTB/Smart%20Dust/Smart%20Dust.pdf

Smart Dust & Ubiquitious Computing. (June, 2009). http://www.nanotech-now.com/smartdust.htm