A handful of tiny and cheap sensors — motes — can be scattered around for measuring all types of things present in the environment — from chemicals in the soil to scents suspended in the air.
Till date, the motes of the dust particles’ size aren’t that smart. But Sailor, a chemist at the University of California, San Diego, to replace the far-bigger-than-dust smart sensors, along with other researchers, is developing the smallest and smarter motes — Smart Dust — revolutionizing the way to monitor and understand our surrounding world.
These sensors will be less than a hair’s breadth across, with each small device capable of doing only one simple job – like detecting a certain chemical.
