Future Building Gas Sensing Applications

Abstract

It is often thought that technology drives innovation – a process that creates great values from ideas. But historically, it is a great vision that drives innovation and seeks for technologies as enablers. Take computer as a technology. “There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home,” said Mr. Ken Nelson, the then president of Digital Equipment Corporation or DEC in 1977 (Nova Online. “Traveling Through Time – Part 2”. Public Broadcasting Service. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/time/through2.html). Although immensely successful in minicomputer business, DEC failed to imagine what Home PC can do, and hence, unfortunately, saw one of the most dramatic demise of a technology company. It was lack of vision and imagination and not technology that led to such demise. Currently, Apple’s success in mobile industry is driven by Steven Jobs’ vision of delivering consumer infotainment by bundling technologies with flair and sleek products.

Therefore, it is important to paint a vision of what gas sensing can do in the future (Hagleitner et al., Nature 414:293–296, 2001; Moos et al., Sensors 9:4323–4365, 2009). What are the possibilities? How it can touch and benefit environment and human lives? Below is an attempt to paint vision through common-life examples. The goal here is to inspire and motivate us to think or dream big as how sensing can change our daily life experience. The dream should not be bounded by what can be achieved or not. That shall ultimately be governed by the real-life constraints such as costs, available technology, etc. But such lofty sensing vision should set a roadmap by defining requirements and seeking solutions for future.

This chapter presents a vision of solutions, particularly with gas sensing, that are achievable today with various matured and emerging technologies. The landscape of sensing solutions is changing fast as more and more technologies are becoming commercially available at even faster rate. Hence, once again, it is our vision that should set the pace of what we can expect tomorrow. So, let us keep imagining.