Wiliot recently announced its Gen3 IoT Pixel, the latest version of its small, battery-free IoT tags that, when attached to pallets and crates, enable asset tracking and inventory management applications in ambient IoT environments.
With its third-generation product, the company has changed some physical aspects of the sensor, and also now supports new capabilities. Amir Khoshniyati, Vice President at Wiliot, told Fierce Sensors that the Gen 3 IoT Pixel uses an aluminum-based inlay rather than copper so it is more sustainable than previous versions.
Gen3’s performance is also more than 10 times better than the previous generation, but at the same time Wiliot has been able to reduce the overall cost structure of the tag, “really driving us towards that 10-cent mark [per tag],” Khoshniyati said. He added that Wiliot also has changed the dimension of the tag to more closely align with the barcode insert dimensions that many reusable pallets and crates have for RFID tags. Regarding the new capabilities, the Wiliot Gen3 Pixel not only detects location and temperature, but also humidity and light.
However, Wiliot, which helped popularize the notion of ambient IoT and is a founding member of the Ambient IoT Alliance, also recognizes that ambient IoT is not an end-game but itself an enabler of a much broader concept now gathering steam: physical AI. And while Wiliot has become more known for its little IoT Pixel, the Wiliot Intelligence Platform behind it is an engine for feeding ambient IoT data directly into physical AI systems.
“[The IoT Pixel is] just an enabler,” Khoshniyati said. “It starts off the data flow. But really, we are a platform company.” The company further describes that platform as an “always-on sensing layer that streams real-world data from the physical environment directly into AI systems that can analyze and act on it instantly.”
Khoshniyati further explained that “the concept of ambient IoT is not just digitizing physical assets [which was key to early IoT], but it's creating the ability for these assets to have sensing capabilities and multiple capabilities behind that. So, it's location, temperature, humidity, and what you can do with that. And then when you look at physical AI, that's our ability to take all of this data from ambient IoT, ingest it and, via AI, predict trends and report on them.”
To highlight the value “continuous data” that can be delivered to these physical AI systems, Wiliot also outlined five “core solutions” that anchor the platform’s capabilities:
● Automated Cycle Counting, delivering continuous inventory visibility across defined areas without scanning or manual intervention.
● Automated Receiving, automatically confirming inbound shipments and reducing dock-to-stock times from days to hours.
● Automated Shipment Verification, preventing mis-shipments by verifying outbound loads at the dock door in real time.
● Reusable Asset Tracking, providing ongoing visibility into RTIs – such as roll cages, totes, and racks – to reduce shrink and optimize fleet utilization.
● Temperature and Condition Monitoring, tracking case-level temperature to protect perishables, enhance freshness, and support compliance.
“Physical AI is becoming a defining capability for modern supply chains,” said Wiliot President Julien Bellanger in a statement. “The combination of our Gen3 IoT Pixels and Intelligence Platform equips enterprises with continuous, ground-truth data at scale – transforming how they manage freshness, availability, logistics, and asset flows across their networks.”