Real-Time Ball

The European passion for football (what we in the United States call soccer) brought about the creation of a wireless location system that can tell exactly where the ball is in real time. This has proven to be a great help in training, and in knowing when a ball is out of bounds or makes a goal in a real game. It can be used in American football, but more important, the technology can be used in real-time materials tracking.

The radio transponder inside the soccer ball, combined with external sensors, lets the precise location of the ball be tracked. But it doesn’t have to be a soccer ball. The same technology can be used to track products through the manufacturing process or a shipping warehouse.

Still’s new wireless forklift can be tracked, and in some cases operated through a wireless link. It retains the driver’s position so that the device can be used outside of wireless range.

Still’s Cube XX modular materials-handling device can be anything from a pallet carrier to a tug, if configured properly. It can be operated remotely, automatically or a driver’s position can be installed.

Germans love speed, and now that 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology is being implemented by T-Mobile, speed has translated into a connection with Audi, just in case anyone didn’t get the speed message the first time around.

Acer was showing what the company said was its new Ultrabook. To me, it seemed a lot like a really skinny netbook that costs more.

PaceBlade was the first out of the chute with a Windows 8 tablet. The combination between this tablet, the PM240 semi-rugged tablet and Windows 8 was a happy one. The Metro interface operated intuitively, it was smooth and responsive, and it made clear why Microsoft is aiming this OS at the tablet market.

T-Mobile and Mozilla were showing off Boot to Gecko phones. This is an open wireless platform that uses apps written in Javascript. The result is a flexible, low-cost smartphone that makes custom app development easy and quick.