Posts Tagged ‘RFID’
As Kidnappings Increase, Mexicans Get Dubious RFID Tracking Chips Implanted In Their Arms
The chip, implanted in the tissue between the shoulder and elbow, sends a signal to an GPS device that the wearer carries. But Xega, the company that manufactures many of the chips, says that they can track clients even without the GPS unit, by sending radio signals directly to the implanted chip. This claim seems very unlikely to be true.
RFID researchers say that Xega’s claim that it can still find clients even if their external GPS unit has been lost is ludicrous. The technology that would allow remote tracking of RFID signals is still far off, they say. Although Xega says they have helped to rescue 178 people in the past ten years, an executive acknowledged that the implant would likely not work without the external GPS.
Mexicans have good reason to be frightened, with abductions having jumped 317 percent in the past five years. One fifth of instances have involved police officers or soldiers, which leads to a mistrust of authority figures. Xega has seen its sales increase by 40 percent in the past two years.
Other companies are selling external GPS trackers equipped with panic buttons, disguised as keychains, watches, or bracelets in the hopes of fooling kidnappers. This approach at least is not technologically impossible, although emitting a regular distress signal could quickly drain the battery of such a device.
New Washable RFID Chips Track Hotel Towels and Bathrobes
Even the ones that accidentally end up in your bag
Linen Technology Tracking saw a problem and devised a novel technological solution. Their washable RFIDs don’t just reduce theft, they say, but also help them keep track of their linens in real time so they know when they need to order more.
But let’s face it, the main issue here is theft. The Honolulu hotel (the hotels have asked to remain anonymous, just to keep you guessing) says it was taking a bath to the tune of 4,000 pool towels per month, a number that it has reduced to just 750 (a savings of $16,000 per month). And that’s just at the pool.
As far as we know the rolls of toilet paper on the unattended maid service cart are still fair game.
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Sensor Networks in Buildings Could Use AC Ducts as Huge, Building-Wide Antennas
Turning HVAC into RFID
Wiring large building for fire safety systems, climate control mechanisms, and other public safety monitoring schemes consumes a lot of wire -- imagine how much feet of copper connects every room, corridor, stairwell and broom closet in a building like the Empire State. So researchers figured out a far more simplified scheme for creating wireless sensor networks within buildings -- why not use the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) ducts that are already connecting the entire building as a that relays data via radio frequency identification (RFID)?
The scheme is rather simple but it could amount to huge cost savings for builders, as it saves the materials and time needed to physically connect sensors within a structure. Take the climate control system for instance. In order to function properly, temperature sensors have to be wired throughout the building to tell the central heating and cooling unit when and where to pipe conditioned air.
But the researchers -- all of whom are current or former students of Dr. Dean Stancil, formerly of Carnegie Mellon and now at NC State -- figured out that an array of RFID-enabled temperature sensors spread throughout a building could beam climate information back to the central unit using the HVAC ducts as a big building-wide antenna.
The researchers demonstrated their technology working across sections of HVAC ductwork about 100 feet long, and they are unsure how much further an RFID tag can be away from the central unit and still send and receive signals. But in concept, the system works for anything you can create a sensor for, eliminating all the wiring from fire alarms systems, security systems, air conditioning infrastructure and even public health and safety sensor schemes that monitor for threats like carbon monoxide. From a materials standpoint, that cuts down on a lot of wiring. From a construction standpoint, that's working smarter rather than harder.
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RFID Chips Can Be Made of Wood, to Tag Trees Without Adulterating the Timber
Fraunhofer Labs are making chips without metal
Of course, a radio-frequency identification (RFID) chip requires a metal antenna to receive and transmit tiny amounts of data, but that amount of metal is negligible, imparting less impurity to wood products than many other existing factors affecting timber quality. The rest of the chip is composed of wood and lignin, a complex compound derived from the cell walls of plant cells.
The chips themselves can't hold a whole lot of information, but for the purposes of the timber industry the tags only need to carry an ID number that's scanned by RFID readers at timber mills and shipping hubs. The rest of the information regarding the timber -- origin, date it was logged, date it was shipped, where it's going, etc. -- is stored in the logging company's computer system.
In theory, a truckload of timber only requires one or two RFID tags provided the shipment is all destined for the same place and purpose. If those few RFID tags are made mostly of wood they can harmlessly pass through the production process without mixing metals into the end product, saving companies the time of trying to dig out metal tags or the headache of producing a product with impurities.
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IBM’s Digital Billboard Displays Individualized Ads By Reading the RFID Data in Your Wallet
The billboards they are developing rely on the RFID chips that are increasingly being built into credit cards and cell phones as a means of storing data that is accessible by contact-free sensors (like the "touch pay" feature on some credit and debit cards that doesn't require the user to swipe). A sensor on the billboard picks up on that RFID signal as the cardholder passes by, tapping information like name, age, gender, shopping habits, and personal preferences.
From there, the billboard could display an ad that is customized particularly for that person, ostensibly even calling his or her attention to it by name. It's all very Minority Report (remember when Tom Cruise passes that billboard that shouts, "John Anderton. You could use a Guinness right about now"?), but it will likely draw the ire of privacy groups who will view it as an unsolicited extraction of personal data.
Because it is. But IBM and advertising groups view it as a way to make advertising more relevant to the user, thus making consumers' lives easier and more efficient as they would no longer be bombarded by advertising that doesn't apply to them.
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Great White Sharks Text Their Whereabouts, For Science and Swimmer Safety
A research effort doubles as a shark-attack warning system
It’s not known how far great whites—whose worldwide numbers are estimated to be fewer than 3,500—migrate or if there’s a season when they spend more time near the coast, says Rory McAuley, a senior research scientist with Western Australia’s Department of Fisheries. McAuley hopes that the buoys, along with about 50 sensors on the ocean floor, will also reveal behavior. This information could help authorities better predict the monthly risk at beaches and restrict seasonal shipping routes to protect sharks from boats.
As a bonus, the work could give swimmers a heads-up when a great white is closing in. If a tagged shark swims within approximately a quarter-mile of a coastal buoy, the system sends a text to lifeguards on nearby beaches. Even swimming at top speed, it might take the dangerous fish a couple of minutes to reach shore, possibly enough time for the lifeguards to drop the phone and sunscreen and get folks out of the water.
Barcode tagger Stickybits scores $1.6 M in funding
, a startup aiming to slap barcodes on real-world objects to link them to virtual information, has raised $1.6 million in additional seed funding on top of earlier $300,000 in initial funding. The company scored some new investors, bringing in and , who join previous investors Mitch Kapor and .
The aim of Stickybits is to capitalize on the growing prevalence of smartphones that can read barcodes with built-in cameras and combine that with the surge of interest in social networking location-based services. Stickybits barcodes can store messages from users and can be accessed by other users with a special mobile application that reads the code.
First Round’s Howard Morgan is taking a seat on Stickybits’ board of directors. Stickybits said it plans to use the money to hire an additional three employees on top of their current five full-timers. The company was founded in January, and is based in New York with an office in San Francisco.
Stickybits launched at SXSW in Austin, Texas, last March. The company sells barcode stickers to people who then put them on objects such as greeting cards or business cards—or anything, really—and use the Stickybits smartphone app to record a message (text, image, video, audio) and upload that message to the barcode. When the next user comes across the barcode, he or she can scan the barcode with a smartphone and access the message. The next user can also record a new message and add that to the barcode, so the content keeps growing. Every message is geo-tagged, so the location of the object at the time of uploading a message is recorded, too.
Stickybits sees this as a way of giving the all the objects in the world a story. This is reminiscent of art project , which does the same thing over SMS: Someone can take a Yellow Arrow sticker that bears a unique code, slap it on an object in the real world such as a park bench and record a text message saying, well, whatever that is pertinent to the place. The next user can send an SMS to the number on the Yellow Arrow and read the message. And then there is , a phenomenon of tagging books with codes and leaving them out in public for random people to pick them up and read and then pass them on after they have read them—all the while documenting the travels of the book on a website.
This essentially turns the world into a giant box of secrets one can unlock, if one knows where to look. The game-like applications seem fun but won’t probably appeal to everyone, but, as cofounder Seth Goldstein explains, Stickybits is looking to a broader set of applications. Rather, the company is about “building technology that allows people to comment on things.”
“We are not in the barcode business,” said Goldstein. “There are applications with courier companies or storage facilities tracking their items with our technology. There is no proprietary hardware, it’s a web service with mobile clients, smartphones. And the proliferation of smartphones today means that a huge number of users have hand-held scanners.”
Stickybits has released an application programming interface for developers, which enables reading and writing bits on any code, be it conventional barcode or , a more advanced kind of barcode increasingly seen on shipping packages. Conceivably, Stickybits could be an alternative to things like radio frequency identification (RFID) technology (RFID) for tracking items in the retail world, for instance.
Goldstein is a serial entrepreneur and the founder of . Stickybits CEO Billy Chasen was part of New York-based investor John Borthwick’s Betaworks incubator where he created , a real-time online analytics service.
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