Engineers at Stanford University have developed a tiny radio that’s about as big as an ant and that’s cheap and small enough that it could help realize the “Internet of things”—the world of everyday objects that send and receive data via the Internet. The radio is built on a piece of silicon that measures just a few millimeters on each side. Several tens of them can fit on the top of a U.S. penny and the radio itself is expected to cost only a few pennies to manufacture in mass quantities. Part of the secret to the radio’s size is its lack of a battery. Its power requirements are sufficiently frugal that it can harvest the energy it needs from nearby radio fields, such as those from a reader device when it’s brought nearby. RFID tags and contactless smartcards can get their power the same way, drawing energy from a radio source, but Stanford’s radio has more processing power than those simpler devices, a university representative said.