RFID Lowdown

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.

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.

Filling Up on RFID

-- By Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

Natural gas being the preferred method of cutting down on fuel costs in most parts of South East Asia, the PTT gas company in Thailand is turning to RFID in an attempt to enrich customers’ re-filling experience. If all goes according to plan during the pilots at three Natural Gas Vehicle (NGV) stations, customers lining up to fill their gas tanks will receive personalized service. With or without wires, RFID tags are being leveraged to identify customers as soon as they pull up into the filling station, figure out how much gas they need, and also work out if their car engines are in need of a tune up.

In one scenario, the one-to-one wire line RFID, the tag is fitted on the car’s gas pipe with the reader on the nozzle of the pipeline; the car’s data, including license number, machine number, driver information, and price, is transferred to a central database as soon as the nozzle touches the pipe. In the second, one-to-many wireless RFID, the reader is embedded at the entrance to the gas station, and with the tag on the car’s windshield, customer data is gathered as soon as the car drives in.

The cost of modifying the cars will be subsidized by PTT, but those who accept this offer will have to pay more for a kilogram (app. 2.2 pounds) of gas – Bt12 instead of Bt8. PTT is banking on the increase in gas-operated vehicles to drive its pioneering endeavor, according to Nuttachat Charuchinda, its executive VP of Natural Gas Vehicles. By the time the technology is commercially launched early next year, PTT hopes to increase the number of filling stations from 76 to 120.

Reading Between Parking Lines

-- By Pushpa Sathish, Staff Writer

It may be good news for the South Korean authorities who are trying to find a solution to the lack of parking and driving space in their overcrowded cities, but for those in violation of established rules, this joint offering from SkyeTek and Omnitech is sure to rain on their parades.

The space rationing program launched by the Korean government with the help of RFID is set to be a greater success with the new uWiz-4000 handheld RFID readers. With rules stating that cars with certain identifiers are allowed within city limits on certain days while others are not, if citizens think they can get away from the long arm of the law by venturing into forbidden territory on their days off, they’re sadly mistaken. The readers, with integrated wireless network connectivity, scan tags on parked cars and send information back to the network database if the vehicles are found to violate the law. SkyeTek reports:

Based on SkyeTek’s M9 UHF module, the uWiz-4000 provides tag support for EPC Class 1, Gen 2 and ISO 18000-6B standards. With power efficiency that enables the reader to last up to a week without recharging, the uWiz-4000 provides parking personnel with reliable reads at ranges up to one meter. The handheld device is the size of a small writing tablet, has a foldable antenna, and weighs just over half a kilogram, making it easy for officials to transport it for use across the city.

RFID Tags: To Stop A Car Thief

Can RFID tagging stop the theft of luxury cars in Malaysia? That's what the Road Transport Department (RTD) Director-General hopes. The tags that they plan to use will be attached to license plates and be capable of transmitting up to 100 meters. What's more, the battery is expected to last 10 years. Handheld scanners at roadblocks could then be used to identify stolen vehicles. [IHT via Slashdot]

This is a different approach for an automotive application than in South Korea where cars in certain areas will be tagged as a traffic control measure, to ensure that only authorized drivers are allowed in certain metro areas on specific days. RFID use in the automotive sector is expected to grow by 20% per year between 2006 and 2010.

Wal-Mart Website Wonky But RFID Program Moving Ahead

Wal-Mart, the company that some might say has been singlehandedly driving enterprise supply chain RFID applications, recently suffered a 10-hour outage on their eCommerce website, for which Information Week Editor Rob Preston laid into them. The problem is that it happened on so called Black Friday, the day after American Thanksgiving, which is said to be the best retail shopping day of the year (which puts some retailers "in the black" with profit, hence the name). The company actually spent 13 months to redesign their website, which relaunched in October and crashed in late November - due to getting seven times the web traffic the previous Black Friday.

Website problems aside, Wal-Mart is at least keeping itself on track with its RFID mandate, possibly ready to add another 700 retailers compliant, which would push the total number to over 1200 with radio frequency technology either already implemented or about to be. Following on the heels of Wal-Mart's push, grocery retailer Kroger might be ready to have its big suppliers use RFID tags. Another grocery retailer, Ahold USA, is already using RFID and will expand that use in 2007.

RFID Applications: Forestry Asset Management

[This post is part of a short series aimed at giving a quick overview of existing and future applications of RFID - radio frequency identification - technology.] Asset Management (AM) is one of the more common applications of RFID technology. Within this umbrella application are many specialized apps targeted at a particular use which typically requires customized techniques as well as equipment.

For example, in forestry applications of AM, such as that developed by TU Munich (Technical University of Munich), a method of applying RFID tags to logs has been devised. In this case, logs that have already fallen are tagged by the harvester. This allows a more refined process and the ability to track a log through several steps. It's much easier for everyone involved in the log harvesting process to determine what stage a log is currently at.

What's unique about the TU Munich application is that the passive tags are stapled into the side of a log by the harvester, compared to other similar apps that use nail-shaped tags that have to be manually hammered by a lumberjack. The harvester collects information about each log and stores it tied to a unique id. RFID Journal provides more detail.

High-Performance RFID Products from Elektrobit launched

Elektrobit, a technology company specializing in embedded software and hardware solutions for selected automotive and wireless environments has recently launched two products in the RFID market. The two products are - Elektrobit RFID Reader and the Elektrobit WLAN Node. With the launch of the first two products in the RIFD category, the company has made its presence felt in the market. It aims to become a leading global open RFID reader system provider.

The two products from the company have been packaged into what they call the ‘Elektrobit Identification Network Architecture’. This launch has been a product of their 10 year experience in radio channel propagation and air interface technologies with world leading companies. Elektrobit is also a member of several global bodies like ETSI and EPCglobal. This further strengthens their image as a committed player in the RFID arena. RFID Solutions online reports:

The Elektrobit RFID Reader works at UHF frequencies, and it is EPC Gen2 and ISO 18000-6C compatible. It provides rugged modern mechanical design and high reading performance with single static antenna. The product is a CE marked and ETSI compliant high-quality reader.”

Retail segment ready to adopt RIFD in a big way in 2007

Several reports are doing rounds in the retail segment regarding the stepping up of RIFD adoption in 2007. Reports suggest that retail giant Wal-Mart is all set to extend its RIFD program to approximately another 700 suppliers. If this is true then it would mean that by the end of 2007 there would be close to 1200 Wal-Mart suppliers who would be using RIFD. This means that by 2007 more than 1200 suppliers would either be shipping products with RIFD tags or would be getting ready to do so. All this is expected to be stream lined by 2007 holiday season.

Apart from this grocery retailer Kroger also seems to be readying itself for adopting the technology in the coming year. It is sending out feelers to its big suppliers to find out if they are ready to adopt the technology. And recently the global head of RIFD strategy at Ahold USA, confirmed that its grocery operation is already geared to expand its use of RIFD technology in 2007. DC Velocity reports:

I know Wal-Mart is getting aggressive," says the CEO of a vendor close to the retail sector. "I don't know if they've told 700 more suppliers or not, but there is nothing to indicate that Wal-Mart has slowed down its desire and intent to make this work. I wouldn't be surprised if they are teeing up another set [of suppliers]."

Sequiam Biometric Deadbolt Lock

In what's claimed to be a first, Sequiam Biometrics is offering a biometric deadbolt lock, BioLock, for home use. A swipe of an authorized finger through a scanner grants access. The lock runs on double AA batteries and has a numeric keypad that makes it easy to manage users. [TMCNet via SecureID News]

While fingerprint biometrics probably tends to be met with caution by the average consumer because of its negative connotations, I can see something like this being more welcome than, say, the implantation of an RFID chip in the hand - like Amal Graftstra did when he grew tired of carrying house keys, and Mikey Sklar did purely for experimental reasons. Furthermore, the BioLock appears relatively easy to use, and biometric information seems to be stored only locally. It can even be set to allow one-time entries on a specific day, at a specific time.