Aquarium Puts RFID on Its Ocean Floor

The staff purchased tags and a reader, embedded the tags in objects intended to simulate actual creatures and objects on the sea floor, and developed software that would display the information on whichever item a child picked up with the remote-controlled arm.

The aquarium hired media design firm Mightybytes, which provided media-related software and integration assistance. Mightybytes was already contributing video displays for the new Shedd exhibit, says Tim Frick, the design firm's owner, and one of the company's developers had worked on a similar RFID application.

Tim Frick

Mightybytes resolved the low read-rate issue by increasing the number of tags in each object. Another option would have been to attach the tags to the outside of the items, but that would have been visible, he notes, and thus distracting. "They wanted realism for the objects," Frick says, "so they had to cast the RFID tags inside."

Mightybytes' engineers pointed out a need for more tags, to ensure the interrogator could read tags through the material of the object the claw picked up, no matter what position that item was in. As a result, Frick says, they now have as many as 20 tags inside each of the five- or six-inch-long objects.

When the claw picks up an object, it reads the tag's unique ID number (the tags on a particular item have ID numbers in a numeric series, all linked to that specific object in the software). The captured ID number is sent by the interrogator via a USB cable running the length of the arm, to a PC where the software resides. The software instructs the display of animated data specific to that object, on the screen within the submarine display. Media information is managed with Adobe's Flash and After Effects software, as well as Autodesk's 3D Studio MAX.

Mightybytes had approximately one week to get the system operating, Frick indicates. The system has been working since that time, Qaiyim reports, though the remote-control arm has had some mechanical problems. According to the Oceanarium, children seem to enjoy the interactivity of its simulated ocean environment. Some might grow up to be marine biologists—or RF engineers.