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NARRATOR: Think you feel stressed and strained, try being
a bridge. Tilts. Cracks. Displacement. Erosion. Daily
wear and tear. And today one out of ten of our nation's bridges
is considered structurally deficient. How do we tackle the
problem? Part of the answer may lie in this small device.
Our story begins back in 2005, with the question, how low
can you go?
MEHDI KHANDANI: I was working on low-power sensor networks as
my academic research.
NARRATOR: Research Mehdi Khandani was conducting as an
electrical engineering professor at the University of Maryland
on ultra-low power-
MEHDI KHANDANI: Sensing synchronization
and wireless communications.
NARRATOR: At the root of his work? Developing algorithms.
MEHDI KHANDANI: Before having any application in mind,
I didn't envision that this would be something useful.
NARRATOR: It took Mehdi a year to figure out that his
fundamental research could be applied to bridges, which led to
this device, a sensor that constantly monitors a bridge's
aches and pains.
MEHDI KHANDANI: The technology of the sensor is an ultra-low
power wireless sensing and communication technique.
NARRATOR: And just how low did Mehdi find he could go to power
the sensor? Four micro watts. Ten million times less than the
power consumed by a forty-watt light bulb, meaning that-
MEHDI KHANDANI: With a non-rechargeable lithium-ion
battery, similar to the ones that you may have in your pocket
calculator, this device can work for more than two decades
in the field.
NARRATOR: Placed in various locations, a group of these
sensors can measure strain, vibration, tilt, inclination,
humidity, temperature, any changes or stresses in the
bridge. The data is transmitted to a low-power data gateway
collector, which uses a cellular service to send data to a
server, where a special software analyzes the information. If the
system detects anything unusual, or outside normal parameters,
it automatically alerts those who need to know.
MEHDI KHANDANI: Structural problems could happen at any
time. When those problems happen, using a technology like
ours could give very early indications where fixing a
problem could be fast, easy, and low-cost. With this old-age
infrastructure, if a problem starts, like that little crack.
If these are not detected early, they may lead to big problems.
Those big problems could be very expensive to repair, and
sometimes, they could put the safety in compromise.
NARRATOR: Sensors are attached with a self-adhesive mount.
Installation time per sensor? One to two minutes. Mehdi
has deployed the sensors on bridges across the U.S.,
Canada, and abroad.
MEHDI KHANDANI: Even though we make a device that looks like a
practical device that works in the field, it still has a core
that is an algorithm, which is an outcome of fundamental
research and we are grateful to NSF for providing support for
doing that fundamental research. We strongly believe that,
without that fundamental research, none of this would
have been possible.
NARRATOR: From this—that. Research to innovation.
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