REAL, LIVE “SMART DUST” — SORTA

The idea of “smart dust” — speck-​​sized sen­sors, able to detect bio­log­i­cal or chem­i­cal arms — has been around for years. But now, Defense News reports, there’s start­ing to be a bit of sub­stance behind the hype.
Currently, the tiny sen­sors aren’t all that tiny — pager-​​sized, or there­abouts. And, already, there are both civil­ian and mil­i­tary orders for the devices. But a sig­nif­i­cantly smaller ver­sion should be ready by this sum­mer, greatly increas­ing the demand for the detec­tors.
Here’s a rough sketch of how the gad­gets work, accord­ing to Defense News:

Each tiny device will fea­ture power, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, sens­ing and com­puter sys­tems feed­ing into a secure, self-​​configuring net­work that can pass infor­ma­tion locally using low-​​powered radios. For longer-​​distance trans­mis­sions to com­mand cen­ters, satel­lite com­mu­ni­ca­tions may be used.
The sys­tem is run by a micro­con­troller that dic­tates the tasks per­formed and con­trols power to the var­i­ous com­po­nents of the sys­tem to con­serve energy a pri­mary con­cern because the sys­tem can house only a very small bat­tery…
From time to time, the micro­con­troller will receive a read­ing from one of the sen­sors, process the data and store it in its mem­ory. It also will occa­sion­ally turn on its com­mu­ni­ca­tions device to trans­mit data to a base sta­tion or another sen­sor sys­tem, or to see if the sys­tem has received mes­sages from other sen­sors in the net­work…
Because of the sen­sors size and low cost, the mil­i­tary could use them in a wide vari­ety of mis­sions, includ­ing the sur­veil­lance of bor­ders, under­ground facil­i­ties, oil pipelines or other impor­tant resources… They also could be dropped behind enemy lines to mon­i­tor adver­saries and equip­ment. For instance, the sen­sors can log and report the speed and direc­tion of vehi­cles, reveal­ing enemy troop move­ments to U.S. troops miles away.
The sen­sor sys­tems were tested by the mil­i­tary dur­ing an early oper­a­tional test at Twentynine Palms Marine Corps base, Calif., in March 2001. During the test, sev­eral sen­sors were suc­cess­fully dropped from an unmanned aer­ial vehi­cle fly­ing 30 miles per hour at an alti­tude of 150 feet.
Once on the ground, the sys­tems became syn­chro­nized and were able to detect the speed and direc­tion of sev­eral pass­ing vehi­cles, includ­ing Humvees, light armored vehi­cles and trucks.

January 20th, 2004 | Uncategorized | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.