Coming soon to somebody near you – or even you: transient or biodegradable electronics
“Imagine recovering from an operation without fear of a post-op infection from a drug-resistant super-bug. Imagine that this is because of a tiny electronic device left behind when they sewed you back up, which monitors the wound, picks up signs of infection, administers a specific amount of heat to the right area and then, job done, disappears into your bodily fluids.
Imagine, too, an oil spill clean-up being monitored by 100,000 sensors dropped from a plane that would dissolve into the water when it was all over. Or a no-longer-loved smartphone that could actually dissolve down the sink rather than clog up your desk drawer.
Then imagine what the military could do with these so-called born-to-die devices. How about electronic eyes and ears that couldbe deployed for black ops in a war zone and then be triggered to dissolve when their mission was over or when they were about to be discovered?
And finally, realise that this isn’t science fiction from Orson Scott Card, the writer of Ender’s Game, but rather current tech funded by Darpa, the Pentagon’s Defence Advanced Research Project Agency, who are the nice people working hard to make autonomous killer robots a living nightmare.”
This is the opening of a fascinating article in today’s “Observer” newspaper.