Smart dust, er, dew Paul Raven @ 30-03-2009 http://futurismic.com/
Here’s another military sf trope to add to the list of fictional gadgets
gradually becoming a battlefield reality. This time it’s the turn of
smart dust… though the team at Tel Aviv University have called it ’smart
dew’ instead:
Dozens, hundreds and even thousands of these Smart Dew sensors -
each equipped with a controller and RF transmitter/receiver -
can also be wirelessly networked to detect the difference
between man, animal, car and truck.
[snip]
Each individual “dew droplet” can detect an intrusion within a
parameter of 50 meters (about 165 feet). And at a cost of 25
cents per “droplet,” Prof. Shapira says that his solution is the
cheapest and the smartest on the market.
A part of the appeal of Smart Dew is its near-invisibility,
Prof. Shapira says. “Smart Dew is a covert monitoring system.
Because the sensors in the Smart Dew wireless network are so
small, you would need bionic vision to notice them. There would
be so many tiny droplets over the monitored area that it would
be impossible to find each and every one.”
Not quite the nanoscopic modular machines of fiction, then, but surely
their primitive progenitors. Not to mention another example of military
hardware that will litter disputed regions for years to come… somehow I
doubt they’ve done much planning about how to retrieve them all once
their job is done. [image from linked article]
<<attachment: smart-dew-bug.jpg>>
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