WattUp active energy harvesting technology to power the Wiliot IoT Pixel tags
Energous Corporation (Nasdaq: WATT), the developer of WattUp®, a revolutionary wireless charging 2.0 technology, today announced a partnership with Wiliot, a Sensing as a Service company and Internet of Things (IoT) technology innovator whose self-powered, stamp-sized computer is changing the relationship between manufacturers, logistics and retailers with their customers.
Together, the companies have integrated Energous WattUp 1W active energy harvesting technology as a new and compelling option to power Wiliot’s IoT Pixel tags that are designed for retail, medical, industrial, warehousing, home and industrial automation.
Wiliot has developed low-cost, active Bluetooth tags (IoT Pixels) that can be attached to nearly anything, with sensors that monitor light, humidity, proximity, and temperature, among other inputs. Multiple IoT Pixels are simultaneously energized by the WattUp active energy harvesting transmitter, enabling them to transfer their data which is bridged through the Energous transmitters’ out-of-band communications channel for further distribution to the Wiliot Cloud.
The Wiliot Cloud is a secure, machine-learning platform that analyzes this data and communicates insights into every unit of inventory as it is made, distributed, sold, owned, used, reused and recycled.
“We are excited to announce our partnership with Wiliot, as we have been working together over the past few months to integrate our technologies to address many of the power and data challenges facing industrial and retail IoT,” said Cesar Johnston, acting CEO at Energous. “Energous and Wiliot are together pioneering the advancement of IoT, enabling new, powerful platforms that provide a level of performance not previously achieved at extended distances.”
“This coming together of Wiliot, Energous and the Wi-Fi infrastructure that is already in place, is a significant milestone towards unlocking the potential of ‘the New IoT,’ where trillions of everyday things gain intelligence and are connected to the Internet,” said Steve Statler, SVP of Marketing at Wiliot. “The flexibility that Wiliot has to harvest energy from multiple radio sources has allowed us to capitalize on the compelling capabilities that Energous has packed into this small, very low-cost device, using existing Wiliot tags that already harvest energy from Bluetooth and LoRa signals. Adding the impressive range and low power consumption of the Energous technology, combined with our intelligent edge processing, allows us to accelerate and scale deployments to many tens of thousands of our IoT Pixels in a single venue and leverage existing Wi-Fi access points as gateways to the cloud.”
“Far-field wireless power, also known as distance charging, is another important step forward in removing the need for wires and cords from IoT centric devices as it extends the utility of batteries in smaller form factors,” said Mario Morales, group vice president at IDC. “As wireless power extends from near-field to far-field, the opportunity for new batteryless sensor types, low power intelligent endpoints, smart tracking tags, and cloud-based data services will open new opportunities across the Internet of Things in areas such as retail, asset tracking, and industrial sensing. The combination of Wiliot and Energous technologies brings a unique solution in how consumers will interface with the pervasiveness of IoT data centric devices and will change the behavior of what consumers come to expect from being always connected, with wearables, smart tags, and mobile devices.
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