IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - October 2015 - 52

Future Directions

Objectives and Activities
By Tom Coughlin

he IEEE Consumer Electronics
(CE) Society Future Directions
Committee (FDC) has been
active since 2013. This group is
supporting and feeding into activities of
the IEEE Technical Activities FDC.
IEEE Technical Activities has funded
student contests on mobile power as
well as asked the IEEE CE Society to
take the lead in a digital senses initiative. Members of the CE Society FDC
are also members of the Cloud Computing Committee, the IEEE Internet of
Things initiative, and the Transportation Electrification Committee.
The CE Society FDC's objectives
are
▼ to help bring interesting and important industrial topics to CE Society
conferences
▼ to help generate articles for IEEE
Consumer Electronics Magazine
▼ to create new initiatives on important
topics in consumer electronics
▼ to create a bigger and lasting presence of the CE Society in the IEEE
and the CE industry
▼ to promote membership growth in
the CE Society
▼ to help create the future.
Here are some of the activities that we
have been participating in over the last
year and have been planning into 2016:
▼ Our Internet of Things Working
Group, as well as the Mobile Power
Working Group, is organizing

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MCE.2015.2462613
Date of publication: 29 October 2015

52 IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

▼

articles and conference sessions at
CE Society events in 2015.
Consumer Home Health-some
workshops and other activities were
held in 2014.
The Sustainable Electronics Committee organized a tutorial session at
and participated in the Sustainable
Technology Conference organized
by IEEE Region 6 in July 2014.
Two mobile power workshops were held
in 2014 and two more are planned in
2015, along with a student energy-efficient mobile application competition.
With the bigger IEEE FDC, we have
had IEEE Future Directions Convergence Events at the 2014 and 2015
IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE) in Las Vegas.
In January 2016, the IEEE FDC would
like to host a mini-Technology Time
Machine (looking at the future of technology) at the ICCE.
The CE Society now has an active
standards activity tied to activities in
our FDC.

MOBILE POWER WORKSHOP
AND STUDENT DESIGN CONTEST
The objective of this effort is to create a
safe and sustainable mobile energy source
for a mobile device, such as a smartphone, that will supply a week's worth of
"normal" use without recharging from a
fixed power source. The creation of longer-lasting energy sources for mobile
devices will have important technical and
social benefits. Can we create something
like a "Moore's law for mobile power" to
enable future consumer applications?

october 2015

Lee Stogner, lead for the Safe
Advanced Mobile Power (SAMP) initiative, has created the IEEE Battery Flipbook, an IEEE Battery LinkedIn Group to
promote our activities in mobile energy
storage. Other communications channels
are upcoming. In a recent poll of IEEE
FDC members, the Mobile Power initiative came in third after brain-to-machine
interface and digital senses. We have great
hopes that we may be able to make
mobile power a major IEEE initiative in
2016.
We held two workshops on this topic
in 2014 and completed a white paper that
is now available on the CE Society website: http://cesoc.ieee.org/about/futuredirections/safe-advanced-mobile-power.
html. In 2015, we will conduct two more
workshops to further develop plans for
this initiative. The first workshop will be
held on 23-24 September 2015 in Milpitas, California. The next workshop is
planned for November 2015 in France.
We will also have student competitions
around energy-efficient applications.
We are currently seeking experts to
participate in the 1.5-day workshops to
discuss issues around power in mobile
devices and the creation of an initiative
to provide a week's worth of power for
"normal" smartphone use without
recharging from a fixed power source,
as well as meeting important requirements for mobile phones (and other
mobile devices). In particular, we are
seeking experts in the following areas:
▼ battery technology for mobile devices
▼ energy generation for mobile devices
(e.g., fuel cells)

http://cesoc.ieee.org/about/future

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - October 2015