Using Smart Dust in Transport Domain

The smart dust concept has been around for almost a decade now, but its application in transport domain has only been recently investigated. This is a very valuable area of research, as smart dust – being generally perceived as the lowcost, ubiquitous sensor of the future – can play an important role in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). Our involvement in several transport-related UK and EU funded projects (such as ASTRA [1], EMMA [5], and TRACKSS [7]) gave us the opportunity to carry out feasibility experiments and to develop demonstrations of smart dust applications in transport domain. We have also investigated how smart dust can be used in collaboration with other (more traditional) transport sensors for developing better Co-operative Transport Systems (CTS). This position paper outlines what we have learnt from using smart dust in transport domain, and provides an illustration on the important role that the smart dust technology can play in future ITS.