From a post by Nanoneophyte:

Over the past few years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been the white-hot center of a flurry of activity. Startups that create embedded sensors for physical things have been snapped up by larger companies at a rapid pace, with deals for IoT startups totaling more than $30 billion in the past four years.

The IoT may well be The Next Big Thing, but maybe the attention around sensors is misplaced…

What if we didn’t even need Pembedded sensors to allow things to gather data about their surrounding environment? What if material could be a sensor in and of itself?

Sentient materials might sound like the stuff of sci-fi, but it’s quickly becoming a reality. A new generation of materials is being developed that can sense temperature, pressure, impact and other variables — completely removing the need for sensors.

Not only can these materials capture and relay data to the cloud, they also can reconfigure themselves on-the-fly to react to changing environmental conditions.

It’s as if materials are becoming not just smart, but “alive” — and it will change the way things are designed and used in startling ways.

 

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Image Credit:   Alias Studio Sydney

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