and that really does track you.”
But being, as he puts it, “super-
motivated to create a world
where everything is networked,”
Guinard persisted, doing
research at Lancaster University
in the U.K. in a lab that created
a mug equipped with a wireless
sensor capable of telling you
when your tea was cool enough
to drink, while alerting your
colleagues that you were taking
a tea break in case they wanted
to join you. Back in Switzerland,
he continued his magni;cent
obsession as a researcher at ;;;
Zürich, a highly regarded techni-
cal university, where he helped
another information-technology
giant, ;;;, create a system that
allows assembly-line machines to
talk to each other about hiccups
and slowdowns and ;re o; e-mail
warnings of production delays.
By ;;;; Guinard had set up a
demonstration project in which
all the appliances, lights, and
heating and air-conditioning
units in a home were networked
together to monitor and reduce
energy costs. He soon realized
that the Internet of ;ings
would never have all that many
things on it unless all of those
things learned to speak the same
language. Special software would
have to be written to get each
thing to explain to its sensor
what it was up to, and then more
special software would be needed
so each sensor could explain
these goings-on to the network in
terms the network could understand. Otherwise, you would have
just a bunch of things mumbling
incoherently, like the late-night
denizens of a big-city bus station.
But writing all that software was
way too much trouble for most
would-be pants-trackers.
To address the problem, Gui-
nard and two other researchers
founded a group they called—
what else?—the Web of ;ings to
come up with standard, easy-to-
use software so that networking
a thing with a bar code or radio
tag would be as easy as signing up
for Gmail. “;en things started
booming,” Guinard says, noting
that a ;;;; Web of ;ings confer-
ence received submissions from
;; research groups in ;; countries.
;;, ;; ;;;, ;;;;, ;;; ;; ;;;;;
still missing? Part of the reason
the Web of ;ings hasn’t reached
us yet is money. Nodes still cost
at least ;;;; that needs to come
down to ;; to get things rolling,
Guinard says. ;e other problem
is that researchers and companies have been annoyingly slow
in coming up with compelling
Web of ;ings applications.
;ere are environmental sensor
networks that can monitor the
health of crops, and you can buy
large, expensive ;;; sensors for
tracking shipping containers.
But what good does that do us
consumers? Besides home-energy monitoring, the only apps
Guinard could name as currently
in play are shoplifting security for
stores and soil-moisture monitoring for plant-care services.
;;; researcher Abel Sanchez
thinks he has an app that could
;nally jump-start the consumer track-your-stu; business.
Today you can
order a coin-
size, wireless
node, ready for
pasting onto
your favorite
thing so it can
have its own
home page.
Executive director of the school’s
Geospatial Data Center, Sanchez
was about to bite into an apple
three years ago when he had one
of those scientist moments: He
suddenly wondered where the
apple came from. His question
eventually led him to an ambi-
tious project that he says will
allow consumers to track the
fruit and vegetables produced
by thousands of small farms
in New England all the way
through local farmers’ markets
and even to the restaurants in
which much of the produce
ends up, all through a Web site
or mobile-phone app. “Con-
sumers are wondering about
the provenance of the foods
they eat,” Sanchez says. “We
want to ;nd healthier, locally
grown food. And we keep hear-
ing about massive food recalls.”
His project, now under way,
requires farmers, markets, and
restaurants to enter inventory
data via their mobile phones,
but he predicts that produce will
eventually carry bar codes and
even ;;;; tags. And once we’re
comfortable tracking apples and
brussels sprouts, there will be no
stopping the Internet of ;ings.
Don’t take my word for it; just
ask the U.S. National Institute
of Food and Agriculture, which
is looking into sticking sensors
onto everything from wheat to
beef so it can be alerted to and
track down spoiled food before it
spoils your day.
We may not even have to
wait for mass-marketed tags
and readers in order to start
tracking our stu;. Sanchez notes
that as our mobile phones get
smarter, they should be able to
use their cameras to map and
monitor what is around us and
link that info to ;;; data in order
to create a map of our earthly
possessions. Later you can ask
your phone questions like “How
many beers are waiting for me
back at home?” and “Where did
I leave the Advil?” Sanchez’s lab
has already modi;ed a Roomba
vacuum cleaner to zip around
a library taking inventory of
tagged books, and built an
automated mini-helicopter that
swoops through a warehouse
to take stock of tagged crates.
Enabling a phone to create data-
bases of things just by carrying it
around wouldn’t be hard, he says.
