A tiny swarm of sensors moving around you to check your health; scouring farm fields in search of parasites and pests; gathering information on the battlefield; dispersed throughout the concrete of a bridge to detect potential fractures; following animal migrations or checking the habitability of a planet in the future … The limit is set by your imagination .
We refer to smart dust , microscopic sensors that could capture almost everything – humidity, temperature, chemical signals, movement, brain waves – everywhere and that may change our relationship with the world.
Like so many things in the field of technology, it is a concept of military origin from which the whole of society could benefit . The idea emerged in the early 1990s from the work of DARPA, the US Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency.
The smart dust (also known as “specks”) would be made up of tiny sensors based on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) of millimeter size , although work is being done to reduce them even more, down to the micrometer scale ( one millionth of a meter).
In reality, one of these “smart specks” would be a low-cost microcomputer that would control the sensors and connect by radio to transmit the collected information over short distances. When the specks come together, they would form very effective networks for microchipping buildings, people, large spaces… But this is not all good news: this miniaturized technology could also pose a serious threat to people’s privacy and freedom .
