Sensors that scavenge their power are all the rage

PERCHED AS IT is above a harbour on the Dingle peninsula, on Ireland’s Atlantic coast, Mike Fitzgerald’s office has an unparalleled view of the domain he hopes to conquer: the open sea. As founder and boss of Net Feasa, a name derived from the Irish word for knowledge, Mr Fitzgerald’s ambition is to fit a sensor to each of the millions of shipping containers that are moving around the world. By using these to track the locations of, and conditions experienced by, those containers, and transmitting that information back to the people who need to know via satellite when a container is at sea and via a mobile-phone network when it is in port or on land, he believes firms will be able to maximise the efficiency of supply chains.