Integrating Smartdust into Intelligent Transportation System

The last few years have seen the emergence of many new technologies that can potentially have major impacts on Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). One of these technologies is a micro-electromechanical device called smartdust. A smartdust device (or a mote) is typically composed of a processing unit, some memory, and a radio chip, which allows it to communicate wirelessly with other motes within range. These motes can also be augmented with additional sensors – such as those for detecting light, temperature and acceleration – hence enhancing their features and making their application areas virtually limitless.

As the smartdust concept is still relatively new, and very little is known about its application in transport domain, conducting research in this area may prove to be very valuable. It is generally perceived that smartdust will become the low-cost, ubiquitous sensor of the future, especially once its size shrinks dramatically to merit its name.

Our involvement in several transport-related EU and UK funded projects (ASTRA, 2005; ASK-IT, 2007; EMMA, 2007; Foot-LITE, 2007; MESSAGE, 2007; TRACKSS, 2007) provides us with an opportunity to carry out experiments and to develop demonstrations of smartdust applications in transport systems. We also have a chance to investigate how smartdust can be used in collaboration with other (more traditional) transport sensors for developing better Co-operative Transport Systems (CTS).

This paper outlines our experience in these projects and provides an illustration on the important role that the smartdust technology can play in future ITS. We also present encouraging results obtained from our experiments in investigating the feasibility of utilising smartdust in real ITS applications.