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Internet of Plastic Things: Detergent Containers and Pill Bottles Could Soon Order Their Own Refills
Here Comes the Internet of Plastic Things, No Batteries or Electronics Required [ieee.org]
[Researchers] at the University of Washington have devised a way of using 3D printed plastic to create objects [washington.edu] that communicate with smartphone or other Wi-Fi devices without the need for batteries or electronics.
This research builds on previous work at the University of Washington dating back to 2014 in which another research team employed battery-less chips that transmit their bits by either reflecting or not reflecting a Wi-Fi router's signals. With this kind of backscattering, a device communicates by modulating its reflection of the Wi-Fi signal in the space.
The challenge with existing Wi-Fi backscatter systems is that they require multiple electronic components, including RF switches that can toggle between reflective and non-reflective states, digital logic that controls the switch to encode the appropriate data as well as a power source/harvester that powers all these electronic components.
In this latest research, the University of Washington team has been able to leverage this Wi-Fi backscatter technology to 3D geometry and create easy to print wireless devices using commodity 3D printers. To achieve this, the researchers have built non-electronic and printable analogues for each of these electronic components using plastic filaments and integrated them into a single computational design.
The researchers are making their CAD models available to 3D printing enthusiasts so that they can create their own IoT objects. The designs include a battery-free slider that controls music volume, a button that automatically orders more cornflakes from an e-commerce website and a water sensor that sends an alarm to your phone when it detects a leak.
"We are using mechanism actuation to transmit information wirelessly from these plastic objects," explained Shyam Gollakota [washington.edu], an associate professor at the University of Washington, who with students Vikram Iyer and Justin Chan, published their original paper on the research in 2017 [washington.edu] [open, DOI: 10.1145/3130800.3130822].
