Peter Hartwell

Saving the World in the Smallest of Spaces

Someday I will explain to my grandkids that I remember when there was a thing called a "switch" we used to control the lighting.

Sensor technology is coming in a big way. It’s already here, in fact, deeply embedded in the aerospace, automotive and marine industries. But most of us are only obliquely aware of this set of micro-tools as the devices that make airbags inflate or read our tennis racket swings on the Wii. They even shift our iPhone displays from landscape to portrait.

As sensor technology gradually seeps into the fabric of our everyday lives, Dr. Peter Hartwell, a senior researcher at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories in Palo Alto, California, is working to make it 1,000 times more sensitive and a million times more ubiquitous. He is doing it, he says, to save the world.

Hartwell, the leader of HP’s microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) team and a quantum science researcher, unravels the mysteries of the smallest spaces the human mind can delineate. What goes on in these spaces, he says, could have big implications. He is currently developing a highly sensitive accelerometer (a device that senses motion or vibration) that can detect if something moves less than one-billionth the width of a human hair.

Simple motion censors already operate in automatic lights that turn on and off by looking for the heat signature of a person. Yet they can be unreliable and annoying, often causing people to disable them. “ Someday I will explain to my grandkids that I remember when there was a thing called a ‘switch’ we used to control the lighting. The key to this is a better sensor, like an accelerometer, looking for vibrations from someone moving into or out of the room.”

Still, creating a smart building where the lights are automatic and reliable is “low hanging fruit” when it comes to the technology’s potential. Hartwell envisions a day when sensors will be scattered around the globe, transmitting crucial information to facilitate our decision-making across a broad spectrum. They will lie on the side of a highway to assess traffic flow. They will be pinned to a suspension bridge to monitor structural flaws. They will detect the presence of salmonella bacteria on a crop of spinach before it leaves the farm and spreads throughout the food distribution chain.

In Hartwell’s dream world, these helpful devices will also tell him if the leftover Chinese food in his refrigerator is safe to eat.

While there’s a part of him that may be too trusting of where this is going – “yes, I’ve heard the Skynet jokes,” he quips – “the reality is that some of this is going to have to happen as the population increases.”

The point of sensor technology, he says, is not to make computers or objects more self-aware, but to make them more aware of us. That way, they will anticipate our needs and actions in ways that are beneficial and that might help us to reduce consumption or save energy. Sensors are not yet as smart as they could be, according to Hartwell, who longs for the day when our computers will not slip into screen saver mode in the middle of a PowerPoint presentation. They should know what we are doing, he says, and behave accordingly.

HP’s most recent application of sensor technology is its Central Nervous System for the Earth (CeNSE), which the company calls an “information ecosystem” that will embed trillions of sensors in the earth and connect them with computing systems, software and services. Hartwell says CeNSE will enable us to listen to the “heartbeat of the earth.”

The most pressing challenge with CeNSE, Hartwell notes, is in the handling of the massive amount of data it will inevitably collect. Much of the data picked up by embedded sensors will be inconsequential. There will not be servers big enough to store and interpret all of it.

The human interface, Hartwell says, is the determining factor that will weed out important data at the level of the sensor itself.

“CeNSE is about measuring accurately enough so you don’t even know the technology is there,” he says.

This is precisely where Hartwell’s micro-perspective on the world has its most powerful impact. By harnessing the tiniest motions and the most minuscule packages of energy, he creates an infinitesimal ripple that gains in momentum as it reaches across the landscape and into our computers. Decisions made in the space between two atoms can make all the difference in how we relate to each other, and to the earth.