RFID Gazette

This is a roundup of recent RFID-related news and views.

Tracking Steel
ThyssenKrupp Steel has managed to run a successful test on a thousand tagged steel slabs using EPC UHF RFID tags. The slabs were shipped from Brazil to Germany and tracked along that route. As a result, they'll continue the process for 100,000 slabs per year, maybe more, using special SATO FlagTag RFID labels. [via RFID Journal]

A Japanese RFID Island
Depending on what country you're in, RFID tags are an everyday thing or their not. In Japan, there's a plan to set up a special tech zone on an island where RFID tags will be ubiquitous. Not only that, they'll use the zone to monitor elderly patients, the movement of pedestrians, and more.

Passive RFID Tag Market Growing
The passive RFID tag market is to nearly US$500M by 2013, compared to just under $125M in 2006. This information comes courtesy of a Frost & Sullivan report.

RFID seems to be enjoying a lot of hybrid use lately, combined with other technologies. Some are actually in use, others are still at the theoretical or testing stage. One such hybridization will combine RFID and nanotechnology to protect homes from earthquake damage. A group of British researchers are working on a self-healing house [via ETechTrends].

The nanotech is applied to the house walls, which can liquify under pressure, then re-harden, thus reducing the chances of crumbling during an earthquake. The RFID is used in conjunction with wireless sensors to warn residents.

RFID hybridization is something that I think we'll see a lot of over the next few years, especially with sensor technology, and as nanotechnology matures.

More Hybrid RFID Technologies
A number of companies have spent the last few years creating hybrid technologies that combine RFID and something else. HAMMER is a system that goes further by combining not two but multiple technologies: RFID, GPS, mapping, and sensors. It also combines a digital camera and PDA. The system helps map archeological sites as well as helps track bar-coded artifacts, amongst other uses. [via RFID Journal]

China To Use RFID For 2008 Olympics
Given the success of RFID implementations in sports stadiums and events in the past couple of years, it's not surprising that RFID will be used by China in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Usage will include security and anti-fraud, such as ensuring that tickets are legitimate. [SDA Asia via RFID News] This is how the 2006 FIFA World Cup (Soccer) event used RFID.

Spanish Reebok Sports Club Using RFID
Sports clubs, too, are implementing RFID technology. A 6,000 member club in Madrid, Spain, uses RFID for a variety of purposes: entry, access to facilities, and payment for various purchases. The club says that over two years, they've been saving the equivalen in Euros of nearly US$100K per year. This is partly due to the fact that memberships are getting updated more often. [via RFID Journal]

New Scientist/Space talks about using currently theoretical shape-shifting smart dust for exploring alien worlds. They describe the functionality of the motes, which is to actually float over a surface, carried by inconstant winds. They have wireless sensors that allow them to communicate with each other.

While there's no mention of RFID in the article, the fact is, these motes could likely be built with RFID technology. Consider the powder RFID chips that Hitachi just came up with. They're not quite nanotechnology, but they're close. Make them smaller, then add a small array of environmental sensors, then have the chips communicate as part of a sensor network. This would probably require some sort of base station, but that could be the space vechicle sent to the alien world.

The Boston Marathon has announced that they'll be using RFID technology that allows monitoring of athletes' whereabouts. This is partly for the purposes of sending wireless or email alerts to friends and family of runners. [via PC World]

They are not the first race to use RFID, but it wouldn't suprise me if more marathons converted to this. (Many sports - such as baseball, golf, soccer, car racing, parkour - are finding interesting ways to use RFID.) Marathon fans often want to watch but cannot be at the event. RFID allows for near real-time monitoring, as well as ensuring that only registered athletes are participating. For the Boston Marathon, RFID tags are slipped over shoelaces before they're tied.

Car sharing services have existed for years in North America in many large and even some small cities. But Zipcar is a service with a difference: they use RFID contactless cards to open the doors, making it much easier to schedule more efficient sharing. The other difference is that Zipcar is the first car sharing service to go international. Besides service offerings in US cities, they are in Toronto, Canada, and , Vancouver.

Cars have had RFID tech in various components including door keys for many years now - even if consumers are not aware of this fact. However, the Zipcar technology means the ability to produce multiple keys per car.

This is actually an ideal time to get into Vancouver, what with the Winter Olympics coming in 2010 and a cramped road infrastructure. Visitors to the games are going to want to rent vehicles, especially since the events are actually spread out over at least two sites. Vancouver area's roads supposedly cannot take a surge in vehicles. So a service like this might be a boon to everyone, especially if they're set up to handle short-term use.

Back in the late 80s, when I lived in Toronto, I had a skinhead buddy who liked to intimidate people. One trick he'd pull was to have me stand still on the sidewalk and he'd run, vault over my shoulders, and virtually float over my head. He'd then do the same over parking meters, over and over until he got a reaction from passersby. I can't remember if he was a Jackie Chan fan, but people either thought it was cool or would be scared of him.

Nowadays, this sort of urban acrobatics (aka parkour, freerunning, freestyling) is becoming commonplace, as witnessed by the 20 videos in the SplashCast included in this post. (Works like a slideshow, but each "slide" is a YouTube video.)

What some Parkour fans have done, though, is turned their acrobatics into a sort of performance course using RFID tags and readers. The gist of it is that they'll wear tags on their clothes or as part of a wristband. A course will have been plotted out beforehand, and RFID readers will be placed at key points, recording when a participant passes by.

It's an ingenious use of technology, but with or without it, it's incredible to watch these guys and gals defying gravity. Of course, the standard disclaimers apply: don't try this at home without someone to train you. Somewhere on YouTube is a video of people getting hurt in Parkour.