Towards energy-independent objects

There are many technological challenges and Andrzej Duda, lecturer at Grenoble INP - Ensimag and researcher at LIG, summed them up as follows: “The sensors, which must be small enough to be embedded on the objects, must furthermore comply with the energy consumption, memory and calculation constraints depending on the target application. In addition, they must also be connected to the Internet by appropriate protocols”. Andrzej Duda and his team are developing “nodes and sensor networks” by addressing all these aspects. “For example, we are currently developing software that can be integrated into hardware devices produced by STMicroelectronics”.

Partial or full autonomy
One main technological barrier is still the energy consumption of the connected objects as it is not enough to simply heighten their autonomy via increasingly efficient batteries, they should ideally be made entirely energy-independent. STMicroelectronics and LIG have designed a sensor coupled with a photovoltaic cell to collect solar energy. Vibration energy recovery methods are also under study at TIMA, which furthermore develops energy-efficient processors which could be used on connected objects.