Wheels of Zeus
American company and unreleased GPS tag
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wheels of Zeus (or WoZ) was a company founded in 2002 by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][excessive citations] WoZ made wireless hardware for keeping track of the physical location of enabled objects.
| Type | GPS locator tag |
|---|---|
| Released | Announced but never released |
| Discontinued | March 2006 |
| Operating system | n/a |
| CPU | n/a |
| Memory | n/a |
In 2004, Motorola announced that it has licensed Wheel of Zeus' WOZ Platform "to develop new networked consumer-electronics devices".[8]
The licensable technology consisted of three components:[9][10][11]
- Smart Tag A tag containing GPS that could be attached to various objects, such as a briefcase or pet. "Acceptable areas" could be preprogrammed, such that the tag would signal the Tag Detector when it was moved outside them. The tag communicated over a wireless network named "wOzNet" and used GPS techniques to transmit the tag's position over extreme distances with very little power.
- Tag Detector This was a handheld device that could monitor a collection of Smart Tags, and provide a distance and direction to help locate them when they were lost. It also communicated with the wOz Service when a Smart Tag was lost.
- WoZ Service An internet-based service that could provide the locations of the various Smart Tags, as well as send an email or SMS notification when a Smart Tag moved outside of its "acceptable area".
In March 2006, Wheels of Zeus shut down operations.[12] Some assets and patents were acquired by ZonTrak.[13]
