We tend to associate the Internet of Things – technology connecting objects to a network – with large items, such as vehicles, smart home features, shipping containers or industrial machinery. Increasingly, however, IoT technology is being used for everything, including small-value items such as fruits, veggies, vaccine vials, clothes, boxes and crates, and just about anything else. The technology to do so is enabled by companies such as Wiliot, IoT platform is on the path to enabling trillions of “things” to gain intelligence.
This week, Wiliot announced its largest-ever single order for the company’s IoT Pixel tags. The order represents an important milestone for Wiliot and its Ambient (News - Alert) IoT ecosystem – which is poised to revolutionize supply chain efficiency, sustainability and productivity. The 25 million IoT Pixels will be manufactured by Identiv, one of the world’s largest producers of specialty RFID tags, inlays, and labels, and is the first part of an even larger order to be delivered to a major new, though unnamed as of now, customer.
“This agreement with Identiv represents an inflection point for Wiliot and the Ambient IoT,” said Wiliot CEO Tal Tamir. “It demonstrates the enormous manufacturing scale that the industry offers to us, while also bringing a leading producer of smart and specialized tags into the Ambient IoT ecosystem – a market that is growing to include many of the world’s largest IoT and telecommunications companies. Global demand for our IoT Pixels is surging and the collaboration with Identiv, alongside other leading manufacturers, will ensure we’re well-positioned to deliver.”
With the form factor of a small sticker, Wiliot’s Pixel tags can turn nearly any item into a connected “thing,” allowing it to me tracked and monitored with the embedded sensor technology. The ability to collect data from anything gives businesses nearly unlimited data to improve supply chains.
Ambient IoT relies on energy harvesting, which many analysts regard as the future of IoT technology. Tiny computers and sensors are powered with energy drawn from the radio waves that are all around us. IoT Pixels are stamp-sized computer tags that cost pennies, attach to any product or packaging, and power themselves by harvesting the energy from radio waves transmitted by other IoT devices.
“The Ambient IoT in many respects represents the future of our industry, as it promises enormous potential in making all businesses more intelligent and connected,” said Steven Humphreys, CEO of Identiv. “We’re proud to be working with Wiliot to build this Ambient IoT – leveraging our existing RFID manufacturing processes to demonstrate that sophisticated devices can be made in very large quantities for just pennies,” added Humphreys.