The technology, Strano said, could one day be used to light the rooms or even to turn trees into self-powered street lamps. In the future, the team hopes to develop a version of the technology that can be sprayed onto plant leaves in a one-off treatment that would last the plant's lifetime.

The radio is small, about the size of a book, and self-powered.

He defined active objects as objects having their own thread of control (or, self-powered).