Internet of Things tagged posts

MIT Media Lab spinout Ori is developing smart robotic furniture that transforms into a bedroom, working or storage area, or large closet — or slides back against the wall — to optimize space in small apartments. Credit: Ori

Imagine living in a cramped studio apartment in a large city—but being able to summon your bed or closet through a mobile app, call forth your desk using voice command, or have everything retract at the push of a button. MIT Media Lab spinout Ori aims to make that type of robotic living a reality. The Boston-based startup is selling smart robotic furniture that transforms into a bedroom, working or storage area, or large closet—or slides back against the wall—to optimize space in small apartments.

Based on years of Media Lab work, Ori’s system is an L-shaped u...

Researchers from MIT’s Microsystems Technologies Laboratories (MTL) have designed a new power converter that maintains its efficiency at currents ranging from 100 picoamps to 1 milliamp, a span that encompasses a millionfold increase in current levels.

Design reduces converter’s resting power consumption by 50%. The “internet of things”, IoT is the idea that vehicles, appliances, civil structures, manufacturing equipment, and even livestock will soon have sensors that report information directly to networked servers, aiding with maintenance and the coordination of tasks. Those sensors will have to operate at very low powers, in order to extend battery life for months or make do with energy harvested from the environment...

Hybrid solar and wind harvesting cells on the top of this model house collect enough energy to light it up inside. Credit: American Chemical Society

The “Internet of Things” could make cities “smarter” by connecting an extensive network of tiny communications devices to make life more efficient. But all these machines will require a lot of energy. Rather than adding to the global reliance on fossil fuels to power the network, researchers report on a single device that harvests wind and solar energy appears in the journal ACS Nano.

Hybridized nanogenerator, including a solar cell (SC) and a triboelectric nanogenerator (TENG), that can individually/simultaneously scavenge solar and wind energies, which can be extensively installed on the roofs of the city buildings...

In Passive Wi-Fi, power-intensive functions are handled by a single device plugged into the wall. Passive sensors use almost no energy to communicate with routers, phones and other devices.Stock images courtesy of vector.me

With ‘Passive Wi-Fi,’ signals can be transmitted at rates up to 11 megabits/s – rates that are lower than maximum Wi-Fi speeds but are 11 times faster than Bluetooth – and decoded on any of the billions of devices with Wi-Fi connectivity. The new Passive Wi-Fi system also consumes 1,000 times less power than existing energy-efficient wireless communication platforms, such as Bluetooth Low Energy and Zigbee.

The technology has also been named one of the 10 breakthrough technologies of 2016 by MIT Technology Review...