Winners 2010 (Boston)

Companies were recognized for their outstanding progress in the fields of Energy Harvesting and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) at the IDTechEx awards dinner in Boston, MA on November 16. Two eminent academics judged the awards - Professor Mike McAlpine of Princeton University, USA and Dr Peter Spies, Senior Research Manager at Fraunhofer IIS, Germany - and the presentations were made at the end of the first day of the highly successful two day conference.

Winners of the IDTechEx Energy Harvesting & WSN Awards are:

1	2	3	4	5

1	Best Technical Development of an Energy Harvesting device: State University of New York at Stony Brook

2	Best Technical Development of a WSN/RTLS device: DecaWave

3	Best Application of RTLS and Active RFID: RadarFind and WakeMed Cary Hospital

4	Best Application of Energy Harvesting: Echoflex Solutions, Inc.

5	Best Application of a Wireless Sensor Network: ITT Corporation and Infinite Power Solutions

1
	Best Technical Development of an Energy Harvesting device

The State University of New York won this award for developing a regenerative shock absorber for vehicles which can harvest over 100 watts under normal driving conditions thanks to vehicle vibrations. The power efficiency of a conventional car can be improved by 2-4%, or 4-8% for a hybrid vehicle. The University calculates that the system could save over $500 million annually in transportation costs in New York State alone. This category was judged on which organization had made the most significant technical achievement in energy harvesting over the past 18 months.

Lei Zuo, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Xiudong Tang, PhD Candidate, State University of New York at Stony Brook

Read the article at Enedgy Harvesting Journal

2
	Best Technical Development of a WSN/RTLS device

DecaWave won this award for their ScenSor chip development, based on Ultra-Wideband technology. It uses innovative techniques to achieve a location accuracy of +/-10cm, uses significantly less power than an equivalent 802.15.4 device and is capable of 500 meters line of sight communication or 45 meters non-line of sight communication. DecaWave plans to have the chip in mass production in 2012.

Luc Darmon, VP of Strategy and Business Development and Gerry O'Grady, Applications Manager, Decawave

Read the article at Enedgy Harvesting Journal

3
	Best Application of RTLS and Active RFID

WakeMed Cary Hospital has deployed a Real Time Locating System (RTLS) from RadarFind to track medical equipment, enhance patient care by efficiently locating clean, disinfected equipment, reduce costs on equipment purchases, rentals and maintenance, and develop best practices for infection control. This system won the award for the many benefits it brought to the hospital.

Stephen Jackson, CTO, RadarFind

Read the article at Enedgy Harvesting Journal

4
	Best Application of Energy Harvesting

A motion occupancy sensor powered wholly by an energy harvesting device won this award for its creators Echoflex. The sensor specification required that solar energy had to provide 100% of the power budget for the sensor. This meant the sensor had to continue to operate over the duration of a standard long weekend without absorbing any further light energy.

Brian Aikens, Chief Technical Engineer, Echoflex Solutions Inc

Read the article at Enedgy Harvesting Journal

5
	Best Application of a Wireless Sensor Network

ITT Industrial Process wins the award for ProSmart™, a wireless module that gathers information from sensors on critical equipment in a manufacturing arena. The predictive condition monitoring system enables manufacturing equipment problems to be identified and addressed before they impact production. Energy is harvested from the vibration of the machines, conditioned and then stored in THINERGY® thin-film Micro-Energy Cells from Infinite Power Solutions. This energy powers processors that collect and process critical information and transmits it to a computer every five seconds where it is analysed and can notify the process owner of changing conditions. The wireless system is powered by the energy generated by the process itself. This massively simplifies the installation and rollout of new network nodes to every machine. There is no wiring involved.

Roger Nesson, Business Development Manager, ITT and Richard Percival, Director Worldwide Sales IPS

Read the article at Enedgy Harvesting Journal

Technology Awards

The award ceremony will be held at the gala awards dinner on Tuesday 16 November. The awards are hosted by IDTechEx, a leader in providing independent global research and analysis on the development and application of energy harvesting and storage, wireless sensor networks and RTLS.

If you would like your company to be recognized for outstanding achievements in the following categories follow the entry instructions here.

1
	Best Technology Development of Energy Harvesting

This award will be given to a company which has launched a new product based on energy harvesting (in the last 24 months, November 2008 - November 2010) and is in the process of bringing it to market. The category will be assessed on the technical development of the product, its potential market, and benefits it brings over alternatives.

2
	Best Application of Energy Harvesting

This is the award given to an actual commercial success with an end-product using energy harvesting (in the last 24 months, November 2008 - November 2010). Judges will look for success in terms of products sold and revenues generated.

3
	Best Technology Development of RTLS/WSN

This award will be given to a company which has launched a new product based on RTLS or WSN technology (in the last 24 months, November 2008 - November 2010) and is in the process of bringing it to market. The category will be assessed on the technical development of the product, its potential market, and benefits it brings over alternatives.

4
	Best Application of WSN

This award is given to the best implementation of WSN. In particular, judges are looking to see the payback from the system, how problems were overcome (if any), and benefits to the user.

5
	Best Application of Active RFID/RTLS

This award is given to the best implementation of Active RFID (including RTLS) technology. Here judges will look at the payback and value for the user that implemented the system and how the company overcame hurdles in implementing the technology.

The independent panel of judges include: