Researchers at the University of Waterloo have taken a step towards making smart devices that do not require charging – or even use batteries.
These devices use an IP address to connect to the internet, and are known as Internet of Things (IoT) devices. As these objects are able to operate without a battery, their maintenance costs are much lower and they can be placed in areas that are off the grid.
Many of these IoT devices have sensors to detect their environment, from a room’s ambient temperature and light levels, to sound and motion, but one of the biggest challenges is making these devices sustainable and battery-free.
Professor Omid Abari, Postdoctoral fellow Ju Wang and Professor Srinivasan Keshav from Waterloo’s David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science have found a way to hack radio frequency identification (RFID) tags, and give the devices the ability to sense the environment.
“It’s really easy to do,” says Wang. “First, you remove the plastic cover from the RFID tag, then cut out a small section of the tag’s antenna with scissors, then attach a sensor across the cut bits of the antenna to complete the circuit.”
Before alterations, RFID tags only provide identification and location. By placing a sensing device across a small section of antenna, however, RFID tags can be modified to enable new applications and capabilities. For example, the research team has hacked an RFID tag with a phototransistor, a tiny sensor that responds to different levels of light.
“We see this as a good example of a complete software-hardware system for IoT devices,” Abari said. “We hacked simple hardware — we cut RFID tags and placed a sensor on them. Then we designed new algorithms and combined the software and hardware to enable new applications and capabilities.
“Our main contribution is showing how simple it is to hack an RFID tag to create an IoT device. It’s so easy a novice could do it.”