The New Era of Nanosensors

George Elvin, Associate Professor
College of Architecture and Planning at Ball State University

Nanotechnology is ushering in a new era of "ubiquitous sensing," as nanosensors are introduced into the environment. In the not-too-distant future, these nanosensors will collect and transmit vast amounts of information about the environment and its users. This ubiquitous sensing is likely to bring a host of benefits, from customized temperature settings in buildings to personalized shopping and health monitoring. However, it will also raise a number of social and ethical issues. Who, for instance, will control these sensors? What information will they gather? And how will it be used?

These questions are becoming more urgent as nanotechnology empowers a surge in sensor deployment. Already, one can buy sensors smaller than a penny to detect airborne toxins like carbon monoxide and even anthrax in and around a building. The "nanodog," for example, can sense explosives in the part-per-trillion range. There is even a microsensor that can sniff out money. Other sensors can be embedded in building materials to relay information on building movement, decay, moisture content, loading, and more.

Nevertheless, sensors in building components are only half of the equation that will transform the way people interact with the environment in the age of nanosensors. The other, even more critical, half is that increasing numbers of people may opt to have devices and, eventually, implants that interact with these sensors.

Already, marketers are using wireless "push" technologies to send messages via cellphones and wireless-enabled PDAs to alert passersby when they are in proximity to particular merchandise. The next generation of this technology will include sensors and other computational and communicative devices built into clothing, like the SmartShirt and SmartBra, which are used today to remotely monitor a wearer's movement, heart rate, and respiration rate in real-time through a nano-enabled conductive fiber grid.

Some people, however, will not be content to have "wired," interactive clothing. An Ohio surveillance firm, for example, has already implanted employees with subcutaneous microchips that monitor their movements within the firm's headquarters (http://www.nanotechbuzz.com/50226711/rfid_implants_heighten_security_raise_questions.php). Implants of this kind certainly pose concerns about privacy, human "enhancement," and social interaction, but they may offer benefits, as well. Consider the 90,000 Americans presently using cochlear implants, microscale brain implants, to hear.

The proliferation of cheap, ubiquitous sensors enabled by nanotechnology will also make buildings "smarter" and more interactive with their users and their environment. They will bring computational and communicative capabilities to so many objects in the environment that not only will there be "smart homes," but also all imaginable types of "smart environments." The term "smart environments" refers to the fact that so many interactive objects will inhabit these environments that people will come to think of buildings less as static structures and more as dynamic networks. At the center of these dynamic networks will be human beings. And these humans will also be wired thanks to nanotechnology and its sister technologies, biotechnology and information technology. Together the "big three" of technology will place people at the center of an environment so interactive it may currently seem like science fiction.

Buildings in the era of nanosensors will incorporate a rich network of interacting, "intelligent" objects, from light-sensitive photochromic windows to user-aware appliances. Because of this, a building designed and built as a smart environment will be constantly changing, as its components continuously interact with users and the rest of the environment. These dynamic environments will be almost organic in their ability to respond to changes.

Ubiquitous sensing and the advent of smart environments promises to radically change the way humans interact with the environment. It will offer new modes of interaction with buildings and other objects in the environment, and it will clearly raise new challenges in privacy, design, and social interaction.

George Elvin, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor in the College of Architecture and Planning at Ball State University, a fellow of the Center for Energy Research, Education and Service, and a Senior Research Associate at the Building Futures Institute. He authors two popular nanotechnology blogs, nanotechbuzz (http://www.nanotechbuzz.com) and smallplans (http://www.smallplans.com).