Energous, a California-based developer of RF-based charging for wireless power networks, is working with retail technology company Flagship in the deployment of wirelessly-powered Wiliot IoT Pixel tags at an Australian supermarket.

New York firm Flagship is a technology company empowering retailers to make better, faster and more informed decisions for their business and customers.

This major store in Sydney will see the first retail deployment of Israeli firm Wiliot’s IoT Pixel smart tags energised by Energous’ WattUp PowerBridges.

Bridging the insights gap for retailers from online to physical stores, Flagship says it is helping retailers build the next-generation brick-and-mortar store. Flagship’s technology automatically tracks the movement of items in a store, fitting room or warehouse, helping retailers understand in-store consumer behaviour and garner actionable insights such as:

• Instant and automatic inventory counts: Of stores, storerooms and warehouse allowing staff to focus their time on the customer experience.
• Loss prevention: Keep track of inventory and reduce theft and shrinkage.
• Fitting room sessions: Better understand what items customers are trying on, what sizes and what they ultimately purchase.
• Replenishment requirements: Get an accurate end of day stock count for each store indicating which items need to be replenished from the stockroom.
• Actionable merchandising: Know how customers are engaging with products for floor merchandising, including items tried on, items tried on together and highest converting items.

“This is our first deployment of a wireless power network for RF-tags, and we are extremely excited about the results that Flagship has achieved using thousands of Wiliot IoT Pixel tags energised by our WattUp PowerBridges,” said Cesar Johnston, CEO of Energous. “This successful deployment can be replicated not only for other retail applications but also for industrial IoT, medical, smart home and smart office applications. With our focus on these markets, Energous is well-positioned to help wirelessly power today’s devices and tomorrow’s innovations.”

Wiliot IoT Pixels are low-cost, active Bluetooth tags that can be attached to nearly anything, with sensors that can monitor light, humidity, proximity and temperature, among other inputs. In the deployment programme, multiple IoT Pixels are simultaneously energised by the WattUp PowerBridges, enabling them to transfer data that are bridged through the Energous transmitter, which intelligently filters and relays the tag data to the Wiliot cloud.

The Australian retail store deployment is a pilot programme that includes thousands of Wiliot tags and is deployed by Flagship, a retail technology company that gives physical stores the ability to track their products in real time while unlocking detailed customer browsing insights. The Wiliot tags in Flagship’s retail deployment are capturing information such as stock integrity (in-store inventory, location) as well as which sizes are being tried on and purchased.

“Though physical stores today face myriad challenges to their business, they feature an unrivalled ability to capture real-time stock and purchasing data that deliver incredible insights,” said Simon Molnar, CEO of Flagship. “However, if the IoT devices responsible for capturing those data lose power or are otherwise unreliable, so too is those data. We’re thrilled at the progress of the joint pilot programme with Energous to provide reliable over-the-air wireless power to thousands of in-store Wiliot IoT Pixel tags and look forward to continuing the partnership.”

Nir Drabkin, sales manager at Wiliot in Australia, added: “The work that Flagship has done using Energous and Wiliot technology is very significant. For one, it’s a demonstration of Wiliot’s partner ecosystem in action, scaling the deployment of our massive IoT technology around the world. It is also a wonderful proof point of a revolution in the retail experience, harnessing the power of the cloud to link the digital to the physical in real time. Continuous real-time inventory enables much more efficient retail operations and a customer experience that makes brick-and-mortar shopping worth leaving the couch for.”

Capable of powering multiple devices simultaneously at-a-distance, WattUp PowerBridge transmitters send power to, and can act as, a data link for connected IoT devices such as sensors, electronic shelf labels, trackers, IoT tags, batteryless devices and more. Multiple WattUp PowerBridge transmitters create a WattUp wireless power network capable of covering unlimited distances for large footprint deployments such as retail stores, industrial warehouses, manufacturing plants and logistics hubs. The network provides consistent levels of power for IoT devices, while eliminating the need to manage and replace batteries or rely on restrictive wires and cables.