What is Smart Dust?
Smartdust is a term used to describe groups of very small robots which may be used for monitoring and detection. Currently, the scale of smartdust is rather small, with single sensors the size of a deck of playing cards, but the hope is to eventually have robots as small as a speck of dust. Individual sensors of smartdust are often referred to as motes because of their small size. These devices are also known as MEMS, which stands for microelectromechanical sensors. Smartdust has theoretical applications in virtually every field of science and industry. Research in the technologies is well-funded and sturdily based, and it is generally accepted that it is simply a matter of time before smartdust exists in a functional manner. Opponents question the risks to personal privacy, but proponents hold that the downsides are strongly outweighed by the positive benefits. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has been funding smartdust research heavily since the late 1990s, seein
