smart dust

Terms from Artificial Intelligence: humans at the heart of algorithms

Smart dust refers to tiny sensing and processing units designed to be scattered in large numbers, typically for sensing purposes. Each is individually poor fidelity but collectively they can deliver important information. Smart dust usually has some form of network communication to enable collective processing, but this needs to be low bandwidt and range because of the mited power availability of the devices. The main uses are miitary and environmental (although the smart device units themselves are polluting if not recovered).

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