Tiny radios embedded in paint could be used to pick up sound, detect whether wine or ice cream has been stored properly or even be painted on the heart to prevent arrhythmias.
BAE Systems researchers developed the miniature wireless sensors, which are powered by scavenging ambient radiation from the atmosphere.
Dr Karl Brommer, an engineering fellow at BAE Systems, started exploring this technology based on radio frequency identification (RFID) tags in 2002, and filed patents in 2005. ‘People complain that most of the cost in manufacturing RFID tags is not in making the circuit, it’s in placing the circuit on the seed of the antenna, the tag,’ he said.
Brommer proposed a solution that would work like inkjet printing, squirting an ensemble of identical radios near the seed point to create sensor technology with a range of more sophisticated applications than conventional RFID technology.
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