At Dragon Boat Race, RFID Captures Festival-goers

The information Lygase gained included the number of people visiting each area, the average time spent at each location, the number of visits by time of day, and a breakdown of visits by five demographics (boat racers, seniors, adult men, adult women and children).

The boat race data provides the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce with the opportunity to ascertain where the greatest traffic was, and to improve future layouts based on that information. The system determined that the playground was the busiest area for children, women and senior citizens, and that it was most crowded around lunch hour. Those at the river's edge were more often male than female.

Ketrus Collins, Lygase's president and CEO

Since the pilot, Lygase has made the system commercially available, for tracking individuals as well as the movement of assets at similar venues, including expositions, with RFID readers installed throughout a location and tags attached to valuable assets. For indoor settings, Collins says, Lygase will install Mojix's STAR readers with eNodes that attach to ceilings and can provide real-time location monitoring throughout an entire exhibit hall or conference area. Each eNode excites all passive RFID tags within its read range (typically, 30 feet), and all are cabled together to form the complete STAR system. In this way, people could also be tracked in real time. In one scenario, an individual could provide a name and an e-mail address or phone number during registration, and be given a tag linked to that personal data. Thus, booth operators could access that information using Lygase's server, in order to know who had visited their booth. If that individual had not been able to speak with a representative, the company could then e-mail a message to that individual at a later date, offering to provide information.

Event planners could also utilize the system to determine where attendees were going, what might be creating bottlenecks, or which booths or kiosk might be inappropriately placed.

At Journal LIVE! 2010, to be held next April in Orlando, Fla., Lygase will deploy its SmartEvents system, including eNodes, to provide 100 percent coverage on the conference floor. The system will offer benefits for attendees, exhibitors, event organizers and event facilities, says RFID Journal's founding editor, Mark Roberti. For example, attendees will be able to access reports regarding which booths they've visited, and then, upon request, download material about the vendors at those particular booths. What's more, organizers can receive reports on traffic throughout the exhibit hall, and booth operators can gain details about the number of attendees who visited their booth, compared with other booths.

"Our goal, in using the system, is to provide more and better information to our exhibitors," Roberti explains. "We hope they will be able to use the data to see whether they are being effective in attracting the right people to their booth, and maximizing the return on investment in the event." Access to the data will be provided to vendors for a fee.