I started looking into smart luggage recently, and my first thought was pretty simple:
Is this actually useful, or are we just putting technology into everything because we can?
A suitcase doesn't exactly need a CPU and an internet connection to do its main job.
But once I started looking at the technology behind smart luggage, I realised there are some pretty interesting problems being solved here, especially around tracking.
The first problem: Where is my luggage?
This is probably the most obvious use case.
Imagine checking in your luggage at an airport and then finding out at the destination that it hasn't arrived.
Normally, you're left asking the airline where your bag is and hoping they can find it.
With a tracking device, you can at least get some information about where the bag was last detected.
But there isn't just one way of doing this.
Bluetooth
Bluetooth trackers are probably the most common solution people are already familiar with.
The tracker communicates with nearby devices, which can then help determine its approximate location.
The good thing is that these devices can be quite small and consume relatively little power.
The limitation is range.
If your suitcase is sitting somewhere far away with no compatible devices around it, Bluetooth by itself isn't going to magically tell you where it is.
GPS
GPS works differently.
A GPS-enabled tracker can determine its geographical position using satellite signals. Depending on the hardware, that location can then be sent to a server through a cellular connection.
This makes GPS much more interesting for long-distance tracking.
But there's a trade-off.
More hardware means more power consumption, more complexity and usually a higher cost.
That's why battery management becomes a pretty important part of designing a smart luggage system.
UWB
Then there's Ultra-Wideband (UWB).
I'd mostly associated UWB with smartphones and device tracking before, but it has some interesting applications here.
UWB can provide very accurate short-range positioning compared to traditional Bluetooth-based approaches.
So I can see a future where different technologies are used together rather than trying to make one technology do everything.
For example:
GPS → long-distance location
Bluetooth → nearby/general tracking
UWB → precise short-range finding
That combination is much more interesting to me than simply putting "GPS luggage" on a product page.
Then there is the security side
Tracking is only one part of the problem.
Luggage is also something we leave unattended quite often.
That creates another set of possibilities.
Smart luggage can potentially include things like:
- Fingerprint locks
- Anti-theft alerts
- Location sharing
- Digital access
- Multiple-user tracking
- Connected mobile apps
Some of these are genuinely useful.
Others I'm still not completely sold on.
For example, I can see myself using a tracking feature regularly. I'm less convinced that I need my suitcase to have ten different connected features.
While researching this space, I came across A Smart Luggage Brand, which is one example of a company combining tracking and other technology with travel products.
It made me curious about where this category is actually going.
The difficult part isn't adding the technology
This is probably the part that's easy to overlook.
Putting a tracker inside a suitcase isn't particularly revolutionary.
Making the whole thing reliable is much harder.
Think about the environment luggage has to survive.
It gets thrown around at airports.
It gets exposed to temperature changes.
It gets dropped.
The battery can sit unused for weeks.
And then suddenly you expect everything to work when you're travelling.
So a smart suitcase has to solve two different problems:
1. Be a good suitcase.
2. Be a reliable connected device.
If either one fails, the product doesn't really work.
A suitcase with great tracking but terrible wheels isn't a great product.
And a fantastic suitcase with a tracking system that stops working after two days isn't much better.
What I think is going to happen
I don't think smart luggage will become popular simply because it has more features.
I think the useful technology will eventually become almost invisible.
You won't necessarily think:
"I'm using a smart suitcase."
You'll just expect your luggage to be trackable.
Similar to how we don't think of a phone's GPS as some crazy feature anymore.
The technology is there, but you only notice it when you actually need it.
That's probably where smart luggage makes the most sense to me.
Not adding technology for the sake of technology, but using it to solve a very annoying problem that travellers already have.
And honestly, after looking into GPS, Bluetooth and UWB, I'm a lot less sceptical about smart luggage than I was when I started.
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