Radios in the Form of Paint: An Interview

Dr. Karl Brommer, a scientist at BAE Systems (which has nearly 100,000 employees worldwide) has invented tiny sensors which can be mixed into paint and applied to a variety of surfaces.

These sensors are “batteryless”, and get the energy they need from cell phone signals and TV signals in the immediate environment. A simple microwave beam is focused on them to interrogate them.

So imagine, you could just paint them onto, say, the wall of a patient’s heart after an operation, and subsequently from outside interrogate the sensors about electrical activity on the surface of the heart, based on which you could decide on how to program an embedded pacemaker.

We interviewed Dr. Brommer on our Engineering and Architecture Radio show about the product, and if you want the mp3 recording, it’s here (7 MB) . Grab it now!

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