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ASK Google where you left your car keys and you won鈥檛 get a useful answer. But ask the FindMyStuff search engine and it replies: 鈥淵our car keys are in the sofa.鈥� That鈥檚 no joke 鈥� go over to the sensor-laden couch in Florian Schaub鈥檚 lab at Ulm University in Germany and you will find them wedged between the cushions.

Schaub and his colleagues are developing FindMyStuff as a way to improve on the current rash of wireless tagging technologies designed to address the fact that we misplace cellphones, wallets, TV remotes and keys with absurd regularity. On average, people tend to mislay nine items a week and waste 15 minutes a day searching for them, according to .

A wave of lost-and-found trackers are appearing this year from a number of start-ups, including of Davie, Florida, and Californian firms of Santa Barbara and of Burlingame. Each of these outfits is testing a slightly different take on a button-sized Bluetooth wireless transmitter that users can assign names to and attach to objects 鈥� including pets 鈥� that they want to find easily.

All the tracker buttons work alongside a smartphone app. They can鈥檛 tell you exactly where the lost item is 鈥� just how far away 鈥� so you have to move in different directions, playing a game of 鈥渉ot and cold鈥�, to home in on it.

Bluetooth only has a range of 30 metres, which is further diminished by walls and other obstructions. 鈥淭heir searchable distance is limited to a few metres so it could be very time consuming to find your item in a large house,鈥� says Schaub鈥檚 colleague Jens Nickels. And once someone leaves the house, to head to work, say, they can鈥檛 find out if they left their wallet at home.

Schaub鈥檚 team say the answer is a search engine for objects that鈥檚 accessible from anywhere. Their system, to be revealed at the conference in Zurich, Switzerland, in September, involves placing tags the size of postage stamps on small objects like wallets and TV remotes. These tags contain two types of low-power transmitter 鈥� an RFID chip and a ZigBee radio. Sofas, chests of drawers and other furniture are then fitted with RFID readers and ZigBee receivers that are connected to a miniature Wi-Fi router in each bit of furniture.

When a wallet sinks below a sofa cushion, its tag activates the sofa鈥檚 RFID reader 鈥� if it is within RFID鈥檚 25-centimetre range. If it isn鈥檛 that close, the wallet tag fires up the ZigBee radio, which requires more power but works over a longer range. Whichever radio signal is activated, it is sent to the Wi-Fi router and a message saying 鈥渢he wallet is in the sofa鈥� is sent to the FindMyStuff search server. The tags may trigger sensors in other nearby furniture too, so the searcher might be told: 鈥淵our wallet is between the table and the fridge鈥�. 鈥淚t鈥檚 just how people describe positions to each other,鈥� says Nickels.

鈥淭he tags trigger sensors in the furniture, so the searcher may be told: 鈥榊our wallet is near the table鈥欌��

Schaub acknowledges that there is a security risk associated with all this connectivity. If your wallet is in your pocket, someone else using FindMyStuff would be able to track you as you pass buildings kitted out with the sensors. To counter this, the system is geared for strong user authentication: only you can search your stuff, Schaub says. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 want to build a surveillance infrastructure.鈥�

He adds that FindMyStuff could be sold as a cloud service alongside smart furniture 鈥� if a major manufacturer such as Ikea adopted the technology it would drive down tag and sensor prices. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 our vision,鈥� he says.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淪eek and ye shall find鈥�