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.

A roundup of recent RFID-related news.

NFC Vending Machine Demo
RFID in Japan has a YouTube video showing someone buying a drink from a vending machine and paying for it with their NFC-enabled cell phone.

RFID Implants For Payment Systems
A nightclub in Barcelona, Spain is allowing patrons to use implanted RFID chips to enter a VIP area and pay for drinks. Said one of the owners of the club:

I know a lot of people have fears about it. Having a radio-transmitting chip under your skin makes you very unique.

Right. So do horns sticking out of your head, which I'll have implanted before an RFID chip.

Dual-Purpose RFID Labels
Checkpoint Systems is introducing an inventory tracking and anti-theft system for retailers. The system uses RFID labels that serves the dual purpose by having two different circuits. This is apparently worrying privacy advocates who feel the system might track customers who chips after a purchase.

RFID is arguably a very efficient technology, made for multiple purposes, useful for private and public sectors. The benefits of RFID are far too numerous to mention in a single article, as the potential applications are seemingly endless. Many in the industry and elsewhere feel that the technology will become ubiquitous and replace older technologies because of its efficiencies and extra functionality. The problem is, it is also a very controversial technology for many reasons, which are thus a barrier to widespread adoption of RFID.

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.

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.

Printed RFID circuits may be here sooner than expected. And all it takes is a regular desktop printer. And a special solution containing Vitamin C and silver nitrate. A PhD student at Leeds University in the UK ran a test on a Hewlett-Packard inkjet printer. The result of using this is the ability to produce mobile phone antennas, RFID chips, and other circuits. Each circuit is reprinted several times to increase conductivity, in case ink dots are not touching.

There's no indication of what this costs, and the use of silver nitrate might raise environmental issues. (Silver nitrate is used to create silver halide, which is then used to process black and white photographs.) However, if the compound is safe and the cost feasible, it might be a better solution than other methods of producing printed RFID chips.

NEC Corp and Toyo Seikan Kaisha, Ltd., both in Japan, have developed a plastic bottle cap with an embedded passive RFID chip. The cap could be used by soft drink manufacturers for the supply chain. It's design is said to be able to avoid any internal moisture, which would normally render the chip useless. [via RFID Weblog]

An alternative might be to use something like the edible RFID chip that Kodak recently debuted. There's also no reason the chip has to be on the inside of the bottle, where the moisture is. A second, hidden layer at the top of cap could hold one of the tiny powder RFID chips that Hitachi created.

Pretec has come up with a tiny waterproof USB flash drive that combines RFID technology to allow remote reading of data. Memory sizes range from 128Mb to 1 Gb. Applications for use involve environments such as hospitals, airports, and warehouses. [Digitimes, Gizmodo, Medical Design Online, Loftwares]

Considering that most RFID chips have puny memory storage, technology like this has numerous applications. For example, such a drive could replace/ supplement the patient records that hang on a clip board in a hospital. In fact, since the device is so small (smaller than an American quarter) it could be used in a number of consumer devices as well, say for payment solutions. However, the USB technology would be unnecessary in some devices.

One other application might be to use it to replace the "dog tag" id tags that US soldiers wear. The Pretec device could be fashioned into a new set of dog tags and carry a soldier's details. This use would maybe put paid to VeriChip's idea of imposing forced chip implantation into members of the military.

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 all the companies levying lawsuits about patent infringement, you'd think that Australia's Sandtracker would at least sell their patents or give them to the RFID Consortium patent pool. Instead, they've decided to abandon them [Stuff NZ]. According to the Stuff New Zealand article, Sandtracker had original thought they could crack the 7-cent barried for RFID chips. So they created their RFID tags with their chips, which use quartz crystal diodes instead of the typical silicon.

Problem is, regular RFID readers cannot be used with these tags. They apparently wanted to redesign their reader and transponder, but decided to abandon the patents. Meanwhile, an Israeli company, SmartCode, has cracked the 5-cent silicon-based tag level. And there's printable RFID tags, which Philips is working on, which if successful will result in sub one-cent tags. However, some people have said that they feel printable tags are a ways off yet.

Still, RFID chips are bound to go down under normal economic influences, as production volumes increase. The catch-22, of course, is that chips (and thus tags) are too high for many organizations to want to adopt RFID technology. Which is why the projects of larger organizations such as Wal-Mart and the US DoD (Dept of Defence) are so important in helping bring prices down.