RFID Gazette

RFID can be used for many more applications than might seem evident. Subni RFID Webservice is a social networking website that encourages people to tag objects and map metadata to this site's database. For example, if you tag a tree, I presume that you can share information such as latitude/ longitude, type, age, city, country, date of tagging condition of tree, etc.

I say "presume" because while you have to register to use the service, they tell you after you waste time filling out the form that they're not taking new members. (They also don't bother setting up the form for anyone outside the U.S.) However, their applications page diagrams what look like very interesting applications - with no text whatsoever to describe them, unfortunately.

Basically, at the time of this writing, this site is a tease, hinting at what could be. Very frustrating but also exciting. For example, they describe a Subni application called Soundtag, which converts information from an RFID tag on a prescription bottle to sound. This would help visually impaired people know that they have the right medication. This is a brilliant idea, and while other companies might be doing something similar, I haven't come across it elsewhere.

Other applications that they describe on the site suggest tagging physical objects. This has the potential for some powerful municipal applications.

For example, amongst the client computing projects that I've worked on, one of the more interesting ones was a forestry-style application for a municipal tree database. For the sample database, I drove around wooded areas and photographed a few clusters of trees. Theoretically, I would have attached some identifying badge to each tree, then recorded approximate geographic coordinates. This information from the field would have been synced up with a central database later, when I "got back from the field."

Now imagine if there was an easier way to manage such a database, and make it central. So put it online, and use durable RFID forestry tags. Provided handheld readers have a wireles connection to the Internet, field agents could update a database - private or public - in real-time. Add environmental sensors and a memory device like the i-Disk RFID flash drive, and environmental conditions could be stored for later analysis.

In fact, any municipal assets such as park benches and bus shelters, could be tagged in this manner. What might also help is a means for citizens to report problems with an asset. At present, if a tree goes down, a bus shelter is smashed, etc., a citizen makes a call and gives the nearest intersection.

In the future, they might be able to use their NFC-enabled cell phone (dual-mode Wi-Fi/ cellular) to call in the information using a VoIP application over a municipal Wi-Fi network. The VoIP client could file-share the data from the asset's RFID tag, minimizing what a citizen has to do. And if tags had IP addresses, like RuBee tags do, the information could be accessed remotely, saving municipalites the cost of gasoline, wear and tear on city vehicles, and the scheduling of personnel - except when needed.

Managing Portable Toilets With RFID
Many thousands of portable toilets across Europe will have their maintenance scheduled more reliably using low-frequency RFID tags. [via RFID Journal]

VeriChip Still Pushing Implants?
Despite VeriChip's poor showing post-IPO recently (due mostly to doubt about the market for RFID implants), their VeriMed Patient Identification System seems to have created a bit of a buzz at the Atlanta Diabetes Expo. The system requires an implant chip, and is supposed to help health professionals, if a patient arrives at hospital and cannot communicate. For some reason, VeriChip seems to always suggest that a bracelet or badge of some sort wouldn't be durable enough.

Intel Goes UHF
Intel, the world's largest manufacturer of computer processor chips, released their first UHF transceiver chip, the R1000, recently. [via RFID Blog] The chip has attracted attention from several companies. Alien Technology, who plan to use the R1000 in new RFID readers, as well as CAEN and ThingMagic, a startup funded by Cisco and MIT. Intel's chip is expected to usher in lower RFID reader prices.

With several thousand pieces of luggage going lost at airports daily, RFID chips sound like an ideal way to reduce the chances of loss. RFID Ltd. is introducing a set of RFID-enabled designer luggage tags for high-end bags from Chanel, Dior, Gucci and others. The tags will vary in color and grain to match the bags they're used with.

The tags are in production now. However, RFID Ltd. has to convince airports to adopt the associated BagChip RFID system,which would include readers from Alien or Symbol. Hopefully, RFID Ltd and others will similarly serve the rest of us who are not part of the jet set crowd and don't buy designer bags.

Big In Japan
McDonald's restaraunts in Japan will allow customers, later this year, to using NFC-enabled mobile phones. (Nokia is one company that has already rolled out NFC phones to be used for payments.)

Hyundai Adopts RFID
Hyundai-Kia Motors is implementing RFID in their Supply Chain to collect real-time distribution information. They are moving from applied bar code labels. They'll be using UPM Raflatac tags.

Dallas Newspaper To Use RFID
The Dallas Morning News will be the first newsaper to use the RFID-enabled Smart Cart system from Cannon Equipment. The system helps to track cart shipments.

RFID In China
China's RFID market reached nearly 800M (about US$100M) Renminbi in Q3 2006 and increase of 30% over Q3 2005.

Managing Patient Records
Advanced Pain Management (APM), a clinic in Wisconsin state, is using RFID tech from Alien Technology and Symbol Technologies (Motorola) to manage the records of 50,000 patients. The legacy system involved medical assistants driving records back and forth between a central location and 28 other satellite offices on a daily basis. The middleware, SmartInstrument, is from Reltronics. The entire solution, hardware, software and integration, is US$5,000, and was integrated into APM's ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system.

Gutter Think: RFID In The Sewers
Warendorf, a German city, is using RFID technology to maintain its 127 miles of seweres. Their system, which is tied in the city's GIS (Geographic Information System), tracks maintenance checks and allows workers to not have to use pen and paper. The result is more accurately recorded maintenance data. [via RFID Journal]

For the most part, many industries such as aerospace fix things when they need fixing (beyond any scheduled maintenance). That's mostly out of a lack of options. However, RFID's use in MRO (maintenance, repair and overhaul) is growing, and the technology can be used for predictive maintenance. This means that costly, even deadly, maintenance problems can be caught before they happen, simply by allowing easier data collection of maintenance checks and equipment status. Boeing is employing RFID in a similar fashion on their new 787 Dreamliners, each of which will have around 2,000 high-memory passive tags.

Nortel, the telecom equipment maker, is making it easier for wireless ISPs (Internet Service Providers), to offer RFID-based services. Nortel offers a municipal wireless platform, and now plans to enhance this with solutions for RFID applications. An example use might be for a municipal fleet management (cars, trucks, school buses, small aircraft?), monitored through RFID tags integrated with GPS receivers.

This could be where the ROI for municipal networks comes in. Municipal networks either have to be paid for by taxes, subscriptions, or advertising - or some combo. If RFID-based services could produce a return on investment, the savings could subsidize part of the infrastructure costs.

Nortel's Municipal Wireless Solutions combines a number of technologies including Wi-Fi, wireless mesh and WiMax.

Here's watching the detectives. Well, security guards at any rate. (Anyone else remember that old British TV show, which pseudo-nebbish angry young intellectual punk Elvis Costello immortalized in his 1970s new-wave song ?) It seems Nokia   feels the need to watch their secruity guards, so they're issuing them RFID phones to  keep track of assigned work within some of their US premises.

Each Nokia handset has an embedded 13.56 MHz RFID tag and a reader. As soon as a guard enters the work premises, s/he waves an RFID-enabled employee id in front of the provided Nokia handset. This enables guards to log their in-time/ out-time.

The phone is carried in the open position while guards patrol the Nokia premises. This allows the embedded reader to pick up information in RFID tags installed at various locations on the premises, which will stand as a record of the posts the guard has supervised on that day.

At the end of the work shift, the handset is closed and data on the phone's RFID tag is transferred via the cellular network to a web-based application termed the Service Manager. Supervisors can retrieve the records in the Service Manager to get information about any guard's assigned and actual work.

RFIDJournal  reports:

The RFID system has been in use for just four months at Nokia's U.S. facilities in Atlanta, Dallas, New York and Seattle. Thus far [...] ithas collected well over 5,000 reads on the guards' activities.

Nokia, who not long ago bought RFID manufacturer Symbol Technologies, is pushing the technology into other applications, including a collaboration with JCDecaux  Finland. The latter provides billboards and other marketing materials. Nokia RFID-enabled phones will be used to track the installation and removal of billboards and posters.

[UPDATE: It was Motorola, not Nokia, that bought Symbol. Apologies for the error.]

Avery Dennison, who have put around US$175M into all Chinese operations since 1995, recently announced RFID technology transfer initiatives in that country, with total expenditures to total over $275M by 2010. Previous efforts include setting up the Avery Dennison Self Adhesive Label Converting College in Kunshan, China, in 2000. Imagine that school name on college jackets.

Avery Dennison created their RFID division in 2004, adding RFID systems, Gen2 inlays and wireless compact flash cards amongst their offerings. They later implemented a Qualified Converter program to certify partner companies. With their their Chinese RFID initiative, they are hoping to capture some of the 5.0+ Bln Yuan expected to be spent in China on RFID by 2009.

additional sources: China RFID News.

RFID In The Beef Industry
A Canadian beef producer is using RFID to track product through their processing plant. The intent is to be able to any part of any butchered animal, should the Canadian Food Inspection Agency wish it. The system they are using, which has both supply chain and cold chain management features, was designed and installed by Merit-Trax Technologies and Psion Teklogix. [via RFID Journal]

MicroTRAKgps JaguarWatch
The classic Jaguar automobile is one of those commands a high-price, whether sold legitimately or on the "street". To prevent the latter, MicroTRAKgps has introduced its JaguarWatch Auto Theft Recovery System. MicroTRAKgps is a division of The Tracking Corporation, who make GPS and RFID
products. MicroTRAKgps was awarded a patent for their hybrid technology. Jaguar cargo containers are also tracked with hybrid RFID and GPS tech from Savi Networks.

RFID Is Red Hot: Top 10 Countries
IDTechEx has reported their findings about the top 10 hot countries for RFID. Number 1 is the US, in terms of adoption of the technology, followed by the UK, Japan, German, China. Canada is the last of the top 10.