Stretchy sensor mesh = "smart skin"

[rhoenix]

A new flexible mesh can envelop airplanes, cars and other devices in a spidery cloak of sensors, designed to act as a network of nerves warning a machine of stress and damage.

Taking a cue from super-thin, super-strong spiderwebs, Stanford researchers designed a matrix of sensors that can wrap around an aircraft or other piece of machinery. The sensors can connect to a computer, warning a pilot or driver about any cracks or strains in the machine before they cause serious damage or injury.

Stanford scientist Fu-Kuo Chang explains that the mesh is intended to give airplanes a sensory mechanism like that of birds. Using radar and communications, airplanes can see and hear, but they can’t feel, he says — unlike a bird, which would feel pain, a plane would not be able to detect strain on its joints during an aerobatic dive.

The mesh involves a system of lightweight gold sensors placed on a plastic polymer sheet, as Discovery News explains. The sheet can stretch and expand to more than 265 times its normal size, causing the material to resemble a giant spiderweb. Chang says one square foot of the material could stretch far enough cover an entire car.

The material could be used for a wide range of purposes, including synthetic robot skin, smart wound dressings or even clothing for pregnant women that would allow them to see their unborn children.

This is not only interesting for what it shows right now, but for where this could very easily go. The article mentions that the mesh cannot "feel" yet, but I imagine with the right sensors added, whatever device has this sensor mesh as its "skin" would very easily be able to "feel" stress on joints, pressure, heat, atmosphere, and many other options as well.

If one then considers the DAS system installed on USAF F-35 aircraft as well, and one might imagine a fleet of drones with a derivative of this sensor-skin could rapidly and thoroughly map an entire area in a fraction of the time required now, for instance.

As for the warfare possibilities for this sort of sensor mesh...