“The wireless era of ‘people talking’ has given way to the era of ‘things talking.’ Micro-wireless technology makes all assets, materials, people, sensors—even vehicles—wireless,” says Allan Griebenow, CEO, Axcess International.
Axcess International says its just-released micro-wireless technology platform, called Dot, is the smallest, most powerful, lowest-cost battery-powered wireless computer with a dynamic view into the status of every “thing” operating in the enterprise, and how each thing contributes to the goals of the enterprise.
By enabling automatic sensing, identification, and assessment of business activity in real time, the Dot chip fosters security and revenue growth by delivering wireless intelligence unattainable until now. Dot-based solutions exemplify what Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester Research calls “The Extended Internet” market, forecasted to grow to $11.6 billion by 2012.
Dot’s flexibility allows it to take many forms to suit specific needs, and, as an enabling technology, it will be the heart of many new and innovative products such as a long range bar code, an electronic property tag, an automatic building access badge, a vehicle identification tag, an electronic cargo container seal, and a wireless sensor transmitter.
The first end-user product to utilize Dot technology ships in December in a card-based form factor. As a personnel credential or ultra-thin tag, it will be used on assets, vehicles, and workers, immediately enabling their wireless visibility.
“The wireless era of‘people talking’ has given way to the era of ‘things talking.’ Dot makes all assets, materials, people, sensors—even vehicles—wireless,” says Allan Griebenow, president and CEO of Axcess. “Once you ‘Dot the enterprise,’ real -time information invisible to the enterprise is immediately made available. This dramatically expands the scope of business intelligence, improves the corresponding decision-making, and establishes a new horizon for automation.”
Dot gives all things in business the ability to be automatically sensed. An example of this sensing is the location of assets such as laptops, and identifying who belongs to the assets. In case of an emergency, Dot provides knowledge of where your workers are. For vehicles, you know automatically which trucks came to and left the yard with what materials.
The technology combines a processor, memory, and wireless communications into one chip about the size of a grain of rice. It runs for years on a watch battery, stores at least three pages of information in memory, and communicates to the world at high speed, all at a cost of only a few dollars each.
“Our software platform handles all types of wireless RFID devices,” says Bryan Tracey, chief architect for RFID solutions supplier GlobeRanger . “These include EPC standards-based passive tags such as those used in the supply chain; and active—or battery-based—tags used virtually everywhere else in industry. Dot is a one-of-a-kind as a hybrid passive and active tagging technology that can be used for multiple applications. That’s very exciting.”
