In this paper, an infrastructure that enables the association of a unique identification (ID) number to objects in the physical world is proposed. The system consists of a small tag that can be attached to any object. The tag is powered optically and establishes an optical communication link with a Reader. The Reader device can write a unique ID in the tag memory and can also readout the number. Each ID is also stored in a cloud database, which allows for associations of other attributes to the tag. By removing the need for a battery, using optical instead of RF communication, and minimizing the need for storing much information besides a single number, the size requirements on the tag are significantly reduced. A larger scale prototype is developed and end-to-end operation of the infrastructure is demonstrated. Prototyping is comprised the optical tag with active photovoltaic area of 1.44 mm2and dimension of 9.7 mm × 6.9 mm, a Reader that optically interrogates with tag through 9600 baud UART protocol, a two-columned debatable for TagID and TagInfo data maintenance and a mobile application. In the end, basic packaging requirements of the tags are discussed and custom spherical packages with 1.8-mm diameter are developed. In the future, it is possible to mass produce the tags at a very low cost and attach them to many physical objects in the environment-creating a bridge between the physical and the cyber worlds.

Many patients with paralyzing injuries or medical conditions retain the use of their cranial nerves, which control the eyes, jaw, and tongue. While researchers have explored eye-tracking and speech technologies for these patients, we believe there is potential for directly sensing explicit tongue movement for controlling computers. In this paper, we describe a novel approach of using infrared optical sensors embedded within a dental retainer to sense tongue gestures. We describe an experiment showing our system effectively discriminating between four simple gestures with over 90% accuracy. In this experiment, users were also able to play the popular game Tetris with their tongues. Finally, we present lessons learned and opportunities for future work.