What is SmartDust?

The Smart dust device is a series of minuscule wireless microelectromechanical sensors (MEMS) that can detect everything from light to vibrations. The sensors are so tiny that they are known as motes.

Presently, the smartdust device consists only of one sensor which is big enough. However, the motes - individual sensors - of the device can be as small as a grain of sand and they are usually made of silicon. The small mote may contain sensing, communication and computation application.
This informational device is being commercialized and now it is being used in different types of organizations.

The Smartdust device was developed by Kristofer S. J. Pister (University of California) in 2001.


References:

1. http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,10801,79572,00.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartdust
3. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=/iel5/2/19363/00895117.pdf?temp=x