Accomplishments based on MEMS

Weather forecasting

Using one of the micro-weather stations, we can strip off the radio and can be wired in a laser pointer. This can go to a distant office laptop, where the software decodes flashing lights in the image, and can give the weather information 21 km away.

Large angle MEMS beam-steering

The laser motes above need to be aimed. A sub-millimeter mirror coupled to two motors on the same silicon chip. The motors can scan a reflected laser beam tens of degrees in either direction.

Silicon maple seeds

Using a honeycombed layer of silicon only 0.1 mm thick 3x10 mm winglet has been made. With a cubic millimeter of Silicon attached, these wings auto-rotate as they fall, just like a maple seed. The next generation will have solar cells built right in.

Smart dust virtual key board

Battlefield surveillance, treaty monitoring, transportation monitoring, scud hunting, etc. can be performed and be communicated.

Autonomous sensing and communication in a cubic millimeter

It is possible to glue a dust mote on to the fingernails. Accelerometers in the smart dust will sense the orientation and motion of each of the fingertips, and can talk to the computer in real time. Combined with MEMS the display, in entire computer I/O would be invisible to the people around us. Chatting can be done with wireless access and we need never be bored in a meeting again! It is a never ending list of applications such as the product quality monitoring, temperature & humidity monitoring of meat & dairy products, impact, vibration & temperature monitoring of consumer electronics etc. are of in credit to the smart dust. The Center for the Built Environment has fabulous plans for the office of the future in which environmental conditions are tailored to the desires of every individual. Maybe soon we'll all be wearing temperature, humidity, and environmental comfort sensors sewn into our clothes, continuously talking to our workspaces which will deliver conditions tailored to our needs.

Social welfare activities like developing interfaces for the handicapped or disabled with the potential benefits of outweighing the risks to personal privacy can be generated. A lot of people seem to be worried about environmental impact. Even in wildest imagination it doesn’t appears that we’ll be capable of making enough Smart Dust to bother anyone. If Intel stopped producing Pentia and produced only Smart Dust, and we spread them evenly around the country, we would get around one grain-of-sand sized mote per acre per year. If by ill chance we did inhale one, it would be just like inhaling a gnat. We would cough it up. Consider the scale - if we make a million dust motes, they have a total volume of one liter. Throwing a liter worth of batteries into the environment is certainly not going to help it, but in the big picture it probably doesn't make it very high on the list of bad things to do to the planet.

A smart dust can act as a distributed autonomous sensor network. Smart dust will facilitate innovative methods for micro fabrication technology and interact with the environment, providing more information from more places less intrusively. Smart dust requires evolutionary and revolutionary advances in miniaturization, integration and energy management. Potential uses include military applications in tracking enemy troop movements from above and detecting chemical warfare agents in the air. Monitoring weather conditions around the globe and detecting fires and earth quakes are among the nonmilitary uses. Stationary motes could be used to monitor the quality of products from factory to consumer.