RFID Lowdown

Fishing For Information

-- Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

The nature conservationists are at it again. And they’re harnessing the power of RFID to help them preserve and study the vagaries of the zoological kingdom. First it was wasps, now it’s fish – the Columbia River Basin Project is tagging migrating salmon and steelhead in the river to understand their lifecycle and study how the environment, fishing, hatcheries and power plants affect their survival. The river is the site of several hydropower systems and dams.

Scientists from the Department of Energy use fishing nets to catch the fish, inject them with the chip, and then release them back into the stream across Idaho, Oregon and Washington. The RFID tag is then scanned using wireless handheld readers and the data sent to the PTAGIS (Passive integrated transponder Tag Information System) based in Portland, Oregon. The agency is responsible for managing and maintaining the data on the fish populations.

Digital Angel, according to a $10 million contract, has provided the passive transponders, hand-held readers, custom-made antennas and the graphical user interface for the project. Zeke Mejia, the company's CTO, claims a 99.5 percent data capture rate.

Will RFID Conquer Outer Space?

-- Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

Are RFID tags robust enough to survive the extreme conditions in outer space? That’s what NASA is attempting to find out when Endeavour takes off to the International Space Station in July later this year. The space shuttle will carry a variety of paper and plastic Gen 2 passive tags from Intermec; they will be attached in a case to the outside of the station for a year during which they will be subject to harsh heat and cold, ultraviolet radiation, and vacuum conditions as it orbits Earth.

If the tags pass the litmus test, they will then be tested on a pre-Moon launch rocket test that is scheduled in another 27 months. According to Fred Schramm, administrator for the internal research and development program at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., the agency is hoping to use RFID:

[via Network World]

to monitor and manage inventory on spacecrafts, and to track internal and external environmental conditions both on the mission to the moon and future manned flights to Mars.

Readers placed in strategic positions would allow data to be transmitted either to a local network on the spacecraft or directly back to Earth. NASA is counting on RFID to efficiently manage the complex vehicles and systems used in space exploration, said Schramm.

Buoying Up the Environment

-- Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

Time and again, nature has had to pay the price for the progress of mankind. The environment has been gradually degraded under the guise of technological advancement. Now it’s time for technology to repay its debt to the earth and contribute its mite to the conservation of natural resources.

RFID is stepping in to do its part – the technology is being used to prevent the destruction of natural coral reefs when anchors are dropped by the numerous yachts cruising the seas. The MarPark system allows boaters to moor their crafts using a rope, a rubber ring, and a smartbuoy. They sign up for the service online and receive the SeaPass ring through the mail.

On arrival at their port of favor, all they have to do is hook the ring to within 4 inches of the reader in the buoy, which in turn is activated only when the sensor picks up the inclination of the moored boat. The buoys are environment-friendly;

[via Wired]

They tether to octagonal modules of reinforced concrete that allow the sea floor to "breathe," minimizing environmental impact.

The ring also provides value added services for the cruisers – on docking, it relays information to an onshore service center that allows them access to water taxis and supplies.

Developed by Italgest Mare with technical know-how from Siemens Italia, the system is supported by the environmental group Legambiente and is currently on trial at a few protected locations in Liguria and Sardinia in Italy. If all goes according to plan, MarPark will park itself at around 20 areas by the year 2009, including Costa Smeralda, Otranto (Puglia) and the Greek island of Corfu.

Worldlabel.com launches embedding system for custom RFID label converting

-- Staff Writer

RFID smart label converter Worldlabel.com has developed a label converting system called the Infinity V1 RFID Tag and Inlay embedding system for smart label converting, which can embed both HF and UHF inlays into custom label sizes outside of standard size label dimensions. The embedding system also includes a novel bad tag rejection function allowing only readable tags to be embedded into the labels. 

Worldlabel says its label converting system will benefit end users looking for custom-size smart labels for applications in supply chain,  consumer packaging, pharmaceuticals packaging and baggage tracking tags and many other applications. The new generation RFID Tag/Inlay embedding machine was jointly developed and built with TÜV SÜD PSB Group.  Worldlabel says the machine will be produced in Singapore, with a current lead time of approximately 12 weeks. The Infinity can either be modulated with current label converting lines or used stand-alone. Operators can key in the label dimensions needed using a touch pad.

For more information: Infinity RFID embedding

Take a Tumble with RFID

-- Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

With RFID being used for a wide range of applications, it follows that a demand exists for rugged, robust tags that withstand extreme conditions. Texas Instruments (TI) has stepped in serve this need with its Overmolded (OM) transponder line of RFID tags, which are:

[via Thomasnet News]

…designed to withstand extreme environments where temperature, high pressure and harsh chemicals inhibit the performance of line-of-sight automatic identification technologies such as bar codes and other less robust RFID tags.

The tags come with two memory options – 2K and 256 bits, they’re small and extremely durable and provide competitive read rates. Perfect for industrial laundry purposes – a fact that has been tried and tested with success in Norway, at the St. Olavs University Hospital in Trondheim.

Microsoft Chooses RFID Hardware from Intermec

-- Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

Microsoft’s Technology Centers in Austin, Reston, Chicago, Boston, Silicon Valley and New York have been embedded with RFID hardware from Intermec Inc., which designs and develops products that facilitate the tracking and management of supply chain assets. CV60 vehicle-mounted computers, IV7 vehicle-mounted RFID readers and IA33E RFID antennas will help Microsoft’s client enterprises and ISV (independent software vendors) to use these state-of-the-art facilities to design, develop, test and implement its .NET Enterprise Servers, .NET Framework and XML Web services, before they deploy them in their own IT environments.

[via Business Wire]

Microsoft selected Intermec for its RFID technology and thought leadership, its commitment to the Microsoft platform, and Intermec RFID hardware interoperability with the Microsoft BizTalk RFID platform.

RFID to the Rescue

-- Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

Another use for rugged RFID technology – in times of war and disasters, natural or manmade. Handheld readers from a collaboration between SkyeTek and ACC Systems will be put to good use – in the Tactical Medical Coordination System (TacMedCS), the wireless communication system that harnesses the power of RFID to gather real-time data during search and rescue operations. The system will help in the identification, location and tracking of both casualties and medical resources.

[via Using RFID]

SkyeTek's embedded RFID technology will power wirelessly connected RFID handhelds used to read information resident on RFID medical wristbands placed on casualties or refugees and electronic dog tags worn by personnel in the field.

Stirring up a Wasp’s Nest with RFID

-- Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

You know people are really passionate about what they do when they catch wasps, tag them with RFID, and then announce that the workers of each nest “visit” relatives in neighboring nests and help baby-sit their young ones. The study, headed by Dr. Seirian Sumner of the Zoological Society of London (ZSL), proved that the wasps were trying to pass on their genes indirectly.

Worker wasps do not reproduce directly, but share genes with relatives, and by raising them, can pass on their genes and keep the line from dying out. The theory reinforces the age-old belief that all creatures are obsessed with the continuation of their bloodlines.

Ok, back to RFID – as many as 422 female workers (didn’t anyone get stung?) were fitted with the tags for the project. The workers maintain the nests, gather food and raise the young. Each nest had sensors that tracked the in-out movements of the wasps, which is how the ZSL team was able to figure out that 56 percent of the population was drifting from nest to nest.

The uses of RFID keep getting “curiouser and curiouser,” as Alice in Wonderland would say!

Trains on the RFID Track

-- Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

RFID is ushering in a wave of operational efficiency in the rail transport division of Transnet, an organization of the South African government. The 80,000 wagons of the general freight rail fleet of Spoornet are set to be tagged with Automatic Equipment Identification (AEI) technology from TransCore. The project, which is expected to be completed in 2008, aims to provide in-transit visibility into wagon location, information on wagon maintenance and the status of a load, under high and low speed conditions, to reduce idle times of wagons and improve efficiency of operations.

Passive tags will be used to track rolling stock to provide operators information about the contents of and location of each wagon as it traverses the 14,400 mile route and 18,800 mile track network. Tags on wagons are read by sensors that identify them in the order in which they pass; the accuracy and direction-sensors allow the re-creation of the whole train as it passes by. Business Wire reports:

Spoornet will join China’s Ministry of Railways, the Association of American Railways and 16 other countries deploying AEI technology to monitor their rail assets. In North America alone 100 percent of all railcars in interchange service are required to be equipped with TransCore’s tags since the Association of American Railroads adopted TransCore’s Amtech brand of RFID technology as the standard for automatic equipment identification.

Make Up Your Mind!

-- Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

If you’re a woman, this piece of news will have you jumping for joy! A Tokyo department store has harnessed the power of RFID to offer shoppers help decide on the right make-up for them. No more scrubbing off the wrong shade of lipstick or the eye shadow that has you looking like something out of a horror novel.

All you have to do to wear the perfect face to work is to walk in to the Mitsukoshi store in the Ginza area in Tokyo, wave one of the 19 RFID-tagged items over a sensor, and a simulator throws up your image wearing said lipstick/eye shadow/blush. Another display shows product information, while a third calls up comments from other shoppers.

Tokyo’s Ginza district is the latest hotspot of RFID activity in the country; a year-long project involving over 10,000 tags and sensors is being trialed across the shopping area.