Integrating smartdust into the embedded middleware in mobility application (EMMA) project

The last few years have seen the emergence of many new technologies that can potentially have major impacts on intelligent transportation systems (ITS). One of these technologies is a micro-electromechanical device called smartdust. A smartdust device (or a mote) is typically composed of a processing unit, some memory, and a radio chip, which allows it to communicate wirelessly with other motes within range. Various sensors can be built directly onto the mote or can come as daughter-boards which can be connected in some way to the mote's main motherboard - hence enhancing their features and making their application areas virtually limitless. As the smartdust concept is still relatively new, and very little is known about its application in transport domain, conducting research in this area may prove to be very valuable. The embedded middleware in mobility applications (EMMA) project provides us with an opportunity to carry out experiments and to develop applications using smartdust in the transport domain. This paper outlines our experience of integrating smartdust into the EMMA project and provides an illustration on the important role that the smartdust technology can play in future ITS. This paper also presents encouraging results obtained from some experiments in investigating the feasibility of utilising smartdust in EMMA project validation applications.