Ghost of a flea

Smartdust

A technology designed with military applications in mind is to be used to monitor the deterioration of Tang dynasty Magao cave paintings at Dunhuang.

Smartdust is a collective term for tiny mobile computers with attached sensors and radio transmitters, known individually as motes. Unlike conventional sensors, motes can communicate with each other by radio and exchange information about their location and environment. Because they are tiny computers, they are can perform complex calculations. They consume little energy, because they switch themselves off when they are not gathering information, so they can function for months on the same battery. Finally, they are very, very small. The current prototype is the size of a matchbox, but the final version will resemble a grain of rice.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at November 25, 2003 09:08 AM

Comments

Posted by: Simon Jester at November 26, 2003 05:41 AM