HP\'s grand vision: measure everything

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NEW YORK (Fortune) -- Imagine walking down the supermarket aislewith a cheap device you could hold up to a tomato. If the sensordetects a pesticide residue, you'd know the "organic"label is a lie. Similar tools could track the chemical content ofwater in a stream, telling you if there was lead contamination andwhen it got there, or keep constant watch on a bridge and tell if astructural steel beam was at risk of collapse.
Such products are almost certain to become common in comingdecades, according to Stan Williams, who heads Hewlett-Packard'sInformation and Quantum Systems Laboratory.
He aims to develop a panoply of microscopic-scale nanotech devicesthat will be able to measure essentially anything - and at low costto boot. Viruses, bacteria, the chemical composition of molecules,vibration, moisture levels, particular sounds - these are just someof the things that the super-cheap devices he envisions will beable to detect.
In an exclusive conversation with Fortune, Williams described indetail a project HP ( HPQ , Fortune 500 ) began way back in 1994. He will speak about it in public for thefirst time next week at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference . No other company he knows of is developing similar products.
"The theme for the lab is CeNSE - for Central Nervous Systemfor the Earth," he says. Williams feels such a grandiose nameis justified. Because these sensors will be built with standardsemiconductor technology, they will ultimately be cheap enough tobuild "in the trillions." That will make it possible todeploy arrays of measuring devices anywhere at a reasonable cost.
In our era of rapidly decaying global environment, such tools couldhelp us know with certainty how our world is changing, and help usmake better-informed choices about how to respond.
Applying these devices to monitor the entire planet will take time.None of these nano-sensors will even come into existence for atleast two years, and will not be deployed in quantity for 5-10years. Before we monitor the planet we will likely use thosesensors to monitor the strength of a bridge's beams. Others mightmaintain vigilance over a high-rise building's structure, or thesteel in a ship's hull or a train track.
The first versions, emerging in the next several years, will beexpensive and are likely to be used to monitor systems in oil andgas refineries and chemical plants, where investments in monitoringvibration and chemical composition will pay off the most."Think of our sensors as stethoscopes," says Williams."As soon as something started vibrating a little bitdifferently we'd know it."
HP has two fundamental types of nano-sensors under development inits lab. The first is a type of measurement device made from arelatively small number of atoms. Because of its small size, eventhe tiniest changes in the environment can perturb it. And thatperturbance can be measured. "When you are able to craftmatter at the nanometer scale," says Williams, "you haveessentially achieved the ultimate level of control over directingmatter, electrons or photons."
Such devices would be able to measure minute amounts of biologicalmaterial, or ultra-tiny vibrations, with tremendous sensitivity."We're working on being able to detect individual molecules ofwhatever you may be concerned about - or individual viruses orbacteria," Williams says.
Because these silicon-fabricated nano-measurers can be put by themillions onto one tiny chip, some of the products HP envisionsresemble a nose - with multiple receptors for various"smells."
But another nano-device that Williams has high hopes for would beoptical: "A very tiny laser would light up and we could lookat the optical spectra of chemicals. Each one is like afingerprint, with a unique spectral identity. That would be asingle universal detector." Though a laser capable of such atask would today cost around $100, Williams thinks they caneventually be produced for about 10 cents.
HP already has working prototypes of various sorts ofnano-detectors working in its 90-person lab.
The company would likely license the sensor designs to others andbuy back the devices to integrate into its own measurement andcontrol information systems. Only once such sensors are combinedwith sophisticated database and analysis technologies can theirpromise be delivered. HP sees its business opportunity in helpingcustomers manage the vastly greater amount of information suchmonitoring will generate.
While Williams is confident HP has a huge head start (and he's notafraid to talk about the project -"We welcomecompetition," he says), this work can only proceed so fast.There simply aren't enough capable engineers in this highlyrarified field, he says. Though the pathway is starting to seemclear, it remains long.