The Eurecat technology centre, a member of Tecnio, will use the occasion of this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) to unveil a new technology based on printed electronics. This innovation will pave the way for the manufacture of hitherto unimagined intelligent objects that can be connected to the Internet. One such example is the wine bottle that will be shown at the MWC, whose contents can be verified without opening thanks to the sensors embedded in the label.
This remarkable development is possible because the bottle has an intelligent, battery-less label incorporating printed electronics that contain temperature and quality sensors. These allow the product to be monitored inside the sealed bottle using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology, which in turn enables the sending of wireless feedback and communication to a mobile device.
The labels were screen-printed on an industrial scale by Germark and have been applied to a number of bottles from the Ramon Roqueta winery. It is the first time they have been used, and the winery will incorporate them for testing purposes into its distribution chain, for delivery to end consumers. The data received will be stored in the cloud, and will provide information about the product from the moment it leaves the winery.
The project is oriented towards industrial production and aims to identify and overcome the obstacles to the mass-production of labels such as these, which have the potential to make a significant impact in areas such as packaging, logistics and the food industry, among others.
Large-scale production of intelligent labels began in 2016 as part of the Interacciona project, which forms part of Retos de Colaboración (“Collaborative Challenges”), a programme that is open to the public and organized by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. Eurecat’s Functional Printing and Embedded Devices Unit and its Smart Management Systems Units both contributed to the development of this new technology.
