[Yael]: Ok so maybe you need to
put a delay between turning on
the burst.
Have you guys looked
at the data?
[Man]: How many of-
[Yael]: Its really fun to be
able to touch something and
think of something and solve a
problem that no one has ever
been able to solve before.
Do you have any way of
plotting what the optimal
frequency is for each one of the
positions?
MAN: I could track that.
My name is Yael Maguire and I am
Chief Technology Officer at
Thing Magic.
[ANNCR]: YAEL HAS BEEN
BUILDING THINGS SINCE HE WAS A
KID.
[Yael]: I remember when
I was about 12 years old that I
really took an incredible
interest in designing and
building radio controlled
vehicles.
[Narrator]: And now, designing
and building things is his job.
Like this little piece of
technology,
that's starting to make a big
difference.
[Yael]: This is a tag. This is
an RFID Tag. RFID stands for
Radio Frequency IDentification.
These are invisible waves that
communicate
information from one point to
another.
If you split this in half,
and then add more -
[Narrator]: Yael and his team
make the readers that take the
information
stored on the tags and send it
to a computer.
[Yael]: We can use this to
identify objects uniquely and
have a computer understand what
those objects are by just
sticking them on there.
The main problem that
board was trying to solve was
people would have to travel a
long distance to get to a
particular job site, and if they
got to that site and they
realized that they had forgotten
you know their scroll saw or
something like that,
they'd actually have to go to a
local store and buy one.
And those things are really
expensive.
[Narrator]: These tags will let
a pickup truck know which
tools are in the back, and
which ones aren't. But that's
just the beginning.
[Yael]: Basically having access
to information and more
information
about objects allows us to be
more efficient about how we
transport them, manipulate them,
handle them.
[Narrator]: Produce travelling
from the field to the store,
for example,
can be affected by changes in
temperarture...
RFID tags might just be the
answer.
[Yael]: With special
types of tags like this that can
actually record temperature,
maybe it will mean that we can
send this product out such that
when it actually reaches you
it's fresher, and newer, and
tastier.
[Narrator]: While electrical
engineers are problem solvers,
using their high-tech
understanding of circuitry and
electronics,
it can take a long time for an
idea to come to life.
[Yael]: Typically to make
a product that can survive all
of the difficulties in the real
world, it takes about a year.
[Narrator]: Which can mean long
hours of meetings, designing,
building, and lots of testing.
[Yael]: So I do a lot of
walking.
I'm certainly not
complaining because I have so
much fun having to pick and
choose between these different
things.
I just wish that there
were more hours in the day.
[Narrator]: But Yael does
have some time left over for
other kinds of fun.
[Yael]: In fact it's actually I
think a
good thing to be able to take a
break from what I'm working on
and be able to focus on
something, keep my mind focused
on one particular activity.
[Narrator]: Which helps him
focus even better on the
projects that mean the most to
him.
Like the one he's working
on with a non-profit he
co-founded called, Design That
Matters.
[Woman]: And this is really just
to show that the concept is
possible,
and then later on we'll develop
things that we can
experiment with and test in the
field and so forth.
[Narrator]: They design products
especially for use in developing
countries.
Like this prototype of a
low-cost, infant incubator.
[Woman]: We want to make
something that's easy to use
in developing countries and will
save children's lives.
[Narrator: Using parts from cars
and other common machinery,
Yael and his team developed a
life saving product that's not
only low cost, but most any
repair person or auto mechanic
can keep it running.
[Yael]: I think part of why I'm
excited about engineering and
science always,
is to be able to look at a
problem, spend some time with
it,
work with colleagues, and
then finally figure out how to
solve it. When you finally solve
one of those problems, one of
those key problems, it's such an
incredible feeling.
Life is too short to not pick
exactly what you want to do.
If you can do it try to just
work towards that and work as
hard as you can to realize that
dream.
[Narrator]: And for engineer
Yael Maguire, it doesn't get
more exciting than this.
[Yael]: I chose a career that I
knew I was going to be
passionate about and that I was
going to love for the rest of my
life.
Tag, you're it.
