Feb 01, 2007Researchers in university labs have the freedom to think creatively about radio frequency identification technologies. They can tackle any business or societal problem without worrying about whether it leads to a commercially viable project. They also can tap their university's vast pool of talent in areas outside of RFID. As a result, companies are turning to professors and students to develop new solutions for their business problems.
BloodCenter of Wisconsin worked with the University of Wisconsin-Madison RFID Lab to assess whether RFID technology could be used to improve its bar-code track-and-trace system for securing a steady supply of blood, starting with the donation sites and ending with the recipients of the blood in a hospital.
|
|
Rodeina Davis, BloodCenter's vice president and chief information officer, chose to work with the lab because it would provide objective advice and present empirical evidence regarding which frequencies and protocols were best to address her company's business and safety needs. The results of the testing were so promising that Davis is now working to amend the International Society of Blood Transfusion standards for blood labeling. She organized a steering committee—consisting of representatives from the RFID industry, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Resources, and EPCglobal—to develop frequency and application protocols for high-frequency RFID inlays in labels.
At California Polytechnic State University, students and professors in the school's RFID Research and Development Laboratory are collaborating with California produce growers to develop a system to track produce, from the field in which it is grown to the point of sale or consumption. Growers want a quicker and more accurate way to manage inventory in the event of a recall, such as those forced by recent widespread E. coli outbreaks.
To develop the produce-tracking application, the researchers are looking at existing RFID technology with a fresh eye. "When we talk to small companies, they are not always interested in a real-time locating system—they want something more simple and affordable," says Scott Swaaley, a Cal Poly graduate candidate in electrical engineering. The goal is to create a low-cost, simple system that growers—who already operate on very thin margins—can afford and easily deploy and maintain in remote areas without much supervision.
Researchers in university labs typically have computer science, engineering, mathematics or RF backgrounds. But the newly opened RFID Applications Lab at McMaster University in Toronto counts public-policy students and faculty among its staff. Pankaj Sood, a recent graduate of the school and now director of the lab, says that researchers in other RFID labs who don't ask their social-sciences colleagues to participate in their work are failing to address RFID's social and political impact.
The lab may soon get its first chance to exercise its holistic approach as it collaborates on an asset-tracking pilot with a Toronto hospital. The hospital would like to study not only how the technology works but also how hospital personnel would react to wearing RFID-enabled name badges, which could locate them in the workplace and possibly monitor their movements. The research would determine what's necessary for the staff to have a comfort level with the tracking application.
End Users' Wish Lists
RFID lab researchers and vendors, listen up. RFID Journal asked end users involved in RFID deployments what product developments they’d like to see in 2007. Here are their wish lists:
Scott Buss, technical leader at the Auto-ID Sensing Technologies Center, Kimberly-Clark:
"I'm hoping for three product improvements that will increase the functionality, reliability and ROI for our RFID deployment: Tags that work effectively with non-RF-friendly products, such as baby wipes (whose moisture soaks up RF signals). Self-diagnosing hardware—the ability for devices, including antennas, to alert users that they are not functioning properly. Applications focused on using RF data to drive the business case, such as product forecasting, promotional event planning, store execution tracking and inventory location tracking."
Ken Porad, program manager of the automatic-identification program for Boeing Commercial Airplanes Group:
"I look forward to the wide availability of RFID readers that can read tags across the entire UHF spectrum (860 MHz to 960 MHz) seamlessly, and I'd like to see an RFID tag that does not require maintenance, such as periodic battery changes, and still provides the 300 feet of range that Boeing needs for the active-tag application it hopes to someday deploy to track aircraft parts."
Pat King, global electronics strategist for Michelin:
"I want application-specific integrated circuits or system-on-a-chip products to emerge en masse and push the high cost of RFID interrogators from sometimes much more than $1,000 each to a few hundred."
Julie Kuhn, vice president of operations technologies for Cardinal Health:
"I wish for a handheld reader and a tunnel reader, both of which are dual-frequency (UHF and HF) and can read up to 150 HF or UHF tags within 2 seconds."
Ernie Redfern, chief information officer for Blommer Chocolate:
"I'd like active, durable pallet tags, especially for wood pallets, that stay put. They either fall off or you need to spend an inordinate amount of time affixing them. Can't someone make a simple tag that fits on a standard pallet and can be put on without having to carry tools around?"
Illustration by Tim Lee.