Fairfield County Business Journal A cell phone for ‘things’
A cell phone for ‘things’
After raising $1 million in seed capital last year, a Stamford-based startup is raising another $6 million in venture capital as it develops a “cell phone for things” to track assets as they are physically moved from one location to another.
As of January, Precyse Technologies Inc. was $1 million along toward that goal, even as it markets a system it calls “iLocate” that would use a wireless network akin to that of mobile telephone carriers to track tags attached to or embedded in objects.
The system differs from existing tracking technologies that rely on radio-frequency identification (RFID) or global positioning system (GPS) technologies.
While providing early options for companies interested in tracking assets, RFID and GPS are limited in that they are ill-suited for two-way communication, a key component of the Precyse system. And companies can only draw RFID data when a tag passes close to an electronic reader programmed to pick up its signal, while Precyse promises far greater range, tracking objects up to a mile distant.
Stamford-based Gartner Inc. estimates that worldwide spending on RFID systems will top $3 billion this year.
It is a radical-enough idea that Precyse was a finalist last year in a contest to develop technologies to reduce traffic congestion, sponsored by Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM Corp.; the Intelligent Transportation Society of America; and Spencer Trask, a New York City-based company involved in Precyse’s venture-capital efforts. Precyse and several other finalists lost out to an Issaquah, Wash.-based company called “iCarpool.com,” which provides workers with ranges of choices for their commutes.
Precyse is thinking bigger than simply transportation networks – by creating beacons with cell-phone-like communications capabilities, Precyse envisions its “Smart Agents” helping locate any manner of objects for manufacturers, fleet operators, defense agencies, health care companies and retailers.
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