The world's smallest computer system has been designed to be an eye pressure monitor for glaucoma patients, something that can be implanted in the eye and then transmit information wirelessly to sensor networks housed in a radio-equivalent device. A few years from now, this device should be commonplace.
The system is no larger than a letter in the sentence you are now reading. (It does have to go into the human eye, after all.) The system will be powered by a tiny solar cell and by a tiny battery, and the microprocessor will be extremely low power (but enough to do the job).One benefit of the system is that it transmits on a single frequency, to which the radio-like device is also tuned. This cuts down on interference and on possible disruptions from other signals. However, it also means that the computer and the receiver (or one like it) must both be operating in order for the system to work properly.
It is, as one scientist termed it, the world's first millimeter-scale complete computing system. Other scientists in other fields are already talking about possible future benefits of such a system, including the monitoring of pollution and the structural integrity of buildings.
No comments:
Post a Comment