Tracking the Small Things
When they first came out, I put Bluetooth trackers on many things. For awhile, they were helpful. And then they were unreliable. And then they ran out of batteries. Where’d I put those batteries? What were they called? LD something or C203?
In the end, I didn’t lose the objects enough to warrant the trouble of putting on a tracker.
However, I’d occasionally lose (or be recruited to help find) tiny objects of high value, either sentimental or financial. I’d kick myself for not having the foresight, tolerance for the annoyance of setting up a tracker, and the investment of time to do so.
The problem of getting many small trackers into objects, registering them and associating them with the correct users, keeping them powered over a long period of time, is very daunting. With a hardware solution, this is even more difficult as it requires miniaturization of components that still need to function properly.
One solution may be vision-based. Vision-based systems can only process what they see (Captain Obvious quote, I know). That would mean they would need to be able to see small objects and where they might be.
“Hey Google, when was I last seen wearing my wedding ring?”
This would mean we’d need to turn our cameras inwards and record ourselves all the time. Would we trust this, especially that the technology to manipulate images will be so widespread and easy to use? Maybe edge-based processing will allow this to happen.
However, a guessing system might make it easier for us to look for objects. It’ll be like our personal Columbo, asking us for clues on where we might have misplaced what we’re looking for.
“Just one more thing…”
If such a system can be connected and learn from millions of people misplacing things, then it could become a super sleuth. We won’t need to track objects, we can just ask for guidance.
