Washington: Frying pans, pill bottles, coffee cups and countless other household objects could soon be turned into a network of Internet of Things that make homes smarter, say scientists. Researchers from University of Michigan in the US developed a system called called IDAct, which bridges the gap between the estimated 14.2 billion ‘smart’ electronic devices that are currently part of the Internet of Things and the hundreds of billions of everyday objects left out of the picture.
“Imagine a world where your pill bottle keeps track of your medication intake and a water glass monitors your hydration level,” said Alanson Sample, associate professor at University of Michigan. “Even your yoga mat is aware of your exercises and could adjust lighting, temperature and background music accordingly,” Sample said. The technology could also have applications in elder care, where it could be used to unobtrusively monitor daily activities, helping seniors stay independent longer without the need for invasive live-in care.
Using radio-frequency identification (RFID) readers and battery-free RFID tags that cost only a few cents, IDAct can sense the presence and movement of people in a room and detect the movement of objects with enough detail to determine, for example, whether you’ve moved a pill bottle or cooked a meal. The tags can be attached to nearly any object in the form of a sticker, and RFID readers can be integrated into everyday objects like light bulbs. —PTI