Apr 01, 2011Back in 2003, Yukihiro Shimada, president of GOV Co., a Japanese firm that develops software and sells computers and peripherals, was having dinner with Hiromitsu Shimakawa, a friend who is a professor at Ritsumeikan University, in Kyoto. They were talking about ubiquitous computing, and came up with the idea of a wearable radio frequency identification reader that would record each object someone touched within a home.
"We realized that if we could achieve this, we could use computers to analyze the logs of what was touched and guess what the person wants to do," Shimada says. "With other ubiquitous tools, users manipulate computers in various places. Our goal is the realization of a system where services are provided according to the context of each user, without the users doing anything extra."
The two friends obtained the support of the university, GOV and other Japanese companies—Uchida Yoko, Octopath and Hitachi Industrial Equipment Systems—to launch Tagged World, which seeks to show how RFID could be used to provide health- and safety-related services within the home.
One such application involves the elderly. Shimada and the project team created a prototype in which they deployed RFID tags within a home, then equipped the occupant's clothing with RFID readers designed to read tags within close range. The readers pick up the IDs in the tagged objects and send them to a host system via a Bluetooth wireless connection. Then, software developed by Ritsumeikan University analyzes the individual's activities. "How much walking an elderly person does is a very good barometer of the person's health," Shimada says.
By tracking people and their belongings, the system anticipates what they need and prompts them accordingly. For instance, if a woman picked up a shirt, pants, socks and shoes, the system would understand she were getting dressed. If she then grabbed the doorknob, the system might let her know, via an audio alert, that her purse was still on the dining-room table. Similarly, if a window were left open, it might ask if she wanted to close it before leaving.
"The essence of this idea is that the person brings the reader to tagged objects in the environment," Shimada says. "This model is the opposite of most RFID systems, such as e-tickets, where people bring tags to fixed readers. We believe our concept of using mobile readers to capture a person's interactions with the world will be beneficial in many areas."
The team is working on smaller wearable readers, and has been talking to companies in Japan about commercializing some of the Tagged World ideas. "This is an opportunity to use technology in a way that serves people," Shimada says.