HP Sensors

Imagine you could know about an earthquake 10 seconds before you felt the ground shake—or figure out that a bridge was in danger of collapsing before it took commuters along with it. That’s the promise behind one of the newest products coming out of Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) labs. By installing a trillion tiny sensors to collect data about the world around us, HP is quite literally trying to build a central nervous system for the earth–a product they call the CeNSE network. This could be a big business: HP will first deploy CeNSE to help Shell (RDSA) drill for oil.

Imagine if this could help them pinpoint the location of oil reserves beneath the ground. It is brobdingnagian. It's unbelievable. Right now, the biggest oil corporations are just scanning the entire area rather than zooming in on a single spot with the help of the current technology.


The reason is simple, it is because by using the current technology, there is a high propensity that you will miss out on quite a number of oil reserves simply because they are too small or they are deep underground which allows them to circumvent detection.

Nonetheless, it is always better to zoom in on a small area of course. This will help the oil corporation save tonnes of money. If they were to drill an entire area, almost 2/3 of it will be empty and only 1/3 of it will be filled with oil. Imagine if they can save the cost needed to drill the 2/3 of the waste land, and convert the savings to consumers' savings, they can easily double or triple their earnings within a short period of time.


Of course, this new sensor has no promises yet. It is still de facto undergoing experimentation and of course the research and development cost is extremely exorbitant which is why, only Shell can afford to participate in the experimentation stage right now.

Here's how it works: Thousands of these sensors, which HP hopes to shrink down to the size of a pin, will be peppered over the area to be monitored. Tiny radio transmitters, which wirelessly send out a constant and massive amount of data, are bundled with them. Specially programmed computers look for patterns and flag critical information about, say, activity along a fault line or unusual movements on the pillar of a bridge.


Well, let's just sit back and watch how this technology develops and whether it is really that effective when it comes to the spotting of trends and anomalies.




Credits -cnn, -astrographics, -kezi, -infovis