Smart Industry 2/2018

Column Bernd Schöne
Tracking Tech
Watch My Dust!
More than a decade ago, rumors
made the round among tech
writers that intelligence services
had managed to develop
miniscule surveillance microphones that
could be stirred by the handful into buckets
of paint going on the walls of office
buildings. Instantly dubbed “smart dust,”
these tiny sensors could then be linked
together via wireless technology to form
all-hearing, self-organizing snoop networks
at a fraction of the cost of bugging a building by
conventional means.
These miniscule mikes, it was said, were so extremely energy-efficient
that they would continue to listen in on conversations
for years and years. The ideas seemed entertaining
at the time, but not even James Bond, we all believed,
would ever be able to make it happen.
Maybe it’s time we all woke up. “No IoT device is so wildly
fantastic (or outrageous) as ‘smart dust,’” David Monahan, an
information security executive for Enterprise Management
Associates recently wrote on ForeScout. He explained that
he believes “IoT miniaturization seems to be working its
way into the realm of nanotechnology.”
Smart dust is essentially a bunch of small wireless microelectromechanical
sensors (MEMS) that can detect everything
from light to vibrations. A tiny device with extraordinary
capabilities, these miniature mikes are equipped with
nano-structured silicon sensors which can spontaneously
assemble, orient, sense, and report on their local environment.
This new technology combines sensing, computing,
wireless communication capabilities, and autonomous
power supply within the volume of only a few millimeters.
It is very hard to detect the presence of smart dust and it is
even harder to get rid of them once deployed.
The concepts for smart dust emerged from a workshop at
RAND Corporation, a think tank, back in 1992, which led
to the development of a working “mote” or sensor node
smaller than a grain of rice. While much of the research is
highly classified, we can safely assume that scientists are
now down to the size of dust particles.
Spying aside, let’s take a minute to ponder what other uses
smart dust could be put to. How about farmers mixing a few
handfuls of smart dust sensors in with their seeds? Later, they
could detect the needs of the crop, which could result in
Some sensors
now can even
make their own
electricity.
Bernd Schöne
is a veteran German
Internet journalist and an
expert on cybersecurity
better fertilization management. Or how about
dusting my next Thanksgiving turkey before
it sets out on its way to my local supermarket,
keeping an uninterrupted record of the
bird’s temperature along the way so I can be
sure it won’t poison me and my family on
the Big Day? Doctors could dust me, inside
and out, and maintain a constant record of
my bodily functions so when the time comes
they will be able to determine which of my vital
signs have deteriorated and exactly what to
do about it – instead of relying on average dosages
and such primitive forms of medication.
There are literally thousands of applications for smart dust
if you think long enough. How about detecting corrosion
in aging pipes before they leak? Or improving safety, efficiency,
and compliance in industry? I sincerely hope that
one day every wrapped item of food in my refrigerator will
be able to tell me how fresh it is. Smart dust will be capable
of measuring vibration, so when I buy a TV set or a computer
drive I can check to see if it was handled with care all the way
from the factory to the store shelf. Museums could dust the
works of the Old Masters and monitor them for the effects of
sunlight or humidity before they fade or molder away – after
all, that Rembrandt may just have cost us a cool 23 million
bucks!
The key to all this, of course, is power consumption. Modern
wireless protocols like WirelessHART, 6LoWPAN, Bluetooth
Low Energy as well as S-NET in Germany are so good
at conserving power that they can function for up to a decade.
These protocols also have the ability to self-organize
thousands of particle-sized sensors into close-knit networks
capable of transmitting the data they gather to a router and
from there off into the cloud. Cost? Negligible!
Some sensors now can even make their own electricity. They
use light, temperature differences, vibrations, or even variations
in the magnetic field of nearby power lines to drive
themselves for years and possibly even for decades. This is
called “energy harvesting,” and a number of manufacturers
of these so-called low-power microcontrollers (LPMs) such
as Texas Instruments, STMicroelectronics, and Microchip
Technology are already producing them in bulk.
So maybe it’s time we dusted off our old notions of what is
possible in the field of miniaturization. Yesterday’s science
fiction is today’s business opportunity!
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