May 20, 2011This week, the foundations are being poured for an ambitious new theme park near Houston that will feature fully furnished houses, gardens and lawns that visitors will be able to view prior to purchasing appliances, fixtures, furniture and accessories for their own homes. The park, known as MainStreet America (MSA) and owned by businesspeople Michael and Barbara Feigin, is about the size of two football fields, and will include a dozen homes with thousands of RFID tags attached to features throughout. Visitors will be provided with Technological Education Devices (TEDs)—RFID-enabled Google Android tablet PCs that can capture data and videos regarding each feature—such as windows, bathroom sinks, sofas and landscaping. They will then be able to use that information to learn more, make purchases or build a shopping cart stored on an MSA server accessible via the Internet.
MainStreet America, scheduled to open in the spring of 2012, will be a perpetual showcase, says Jim McCloskey, MSA's Web technologies and design specialist. It will feature a 44,000-square-foot, two-story visitor's center surrounded by 12 houses ranging in size from 1,500 to 6,000 square feet,. The homes, built in various styles, including Old World Mediterranean Greek Revival, Texas Hill Country and Contemporary Modern, are intended to showcase everything from structural elements—such as roofing, insulation and frames—to appliances and furniture. Visitors will be able to roam through the 14-acre park to browse through these features, in order to learn more, or to make purchases at the guest center.
But one of the site's most unique aspects will be an array of ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) EPC Gen 2 RFID tags attached to signs, walls, fixtures and every other feature within the park. Visitors will be able to access information about everything they see, by sweeping a TED's reader within a few inches of each corresponding tag.
According to McCloskey, the TED will consist of a seven-inch Android handheld tablet with a Microelectronics Technology RFID ME RFID reader in the form of a dongle that plugs into the tablet's USB port. MainStreet America is developing its own application software to work with the RFID ME reader and run on the Android operating system. For demonstration purposes, McCloskey says, the company has built a prototype with an Apple iPad and the company's software application.
Once MainStreet America is up and running, visitors will first check in at the guest center to pick up their daily schedules, along with a TED handheld device. Each guest will provide his or her name, some demographic information (such as age and gender) and an e-mail address, which will all be entered into MSA's software, and linked to the TED's ID number. The visitors will then proceed through the park. Upon seeing a product of interest, a guest will be able to pass the device near that item's tag, which will be printed with the MainStreet America logo and the instruction "scan here." The TED will capture the tag's unique ID number, send it to the MSA server via a Wi-Fi connection, and receive product information back from the server that will be linked to the tag's ID, which it will then display on its screen. That information could include videos, pricing and installation details about that product.
As the visitor accesses data, a record will be stored by MSA's software, linking the read event to the individual's identity and e-mail address, so that he or she will later be able to access that data in what MSA calls a virtual shopping cart. The software will also track visitor behavior for the vendors of the various products. For example, if a specific tag is read, that event will be stored, and the MSA software will be able to perform an analysis to determine such details as which demographic groups showed the greatest interest in an item, the number of times that the tag was read, how long an individual spent looking at information about that product before continuing on to another, and which data he or she accessed, such as a video or pricing information.
According to McCloskey, the company needed the RFID solution to provide visitors with the freedom to walk around the park in a "self-guided tour" setting, with the ability to learn more about items as they choose, without requiring an accompanying sales representative. Passive UHF Gen 2 technology was selected for the system, he says, since high-frequency (HF) handhelds require more battery power to read a tag, and it is important for users to have a long battery life in the handheld to allow time to browse the entire park. What's more, he notes, active RFID tags are considerably more expensive and have such a long read range that readers would receive transmission from tags attached to other products within the vicinity, not just those selected by a visitor. Because they have a shorter read range, he says, passive EPC Gen 2 tags are a better choice. To further reduce the potential of reading several tags simultaneously, the MainStreet handheld software is designed to initially allow only one read (the first one captured), while ignoring transmissions from other tags for a pre-set length of time, such as 30 seconds.
Since the MainStreet America park in Houston was announced, McCloskey says, the company "has had incredible response" from vendors that could potentially contribute their home products to the showcase. "Their responses have been very positive," he states. Regarding the RFID functionality, he adds, "At this point, no one else is doing something like this."
By August, MainStreet America hopes to begin testing several TED readers simultaneously, in order to determine their ability to read tags as well as access data related to a particular tag's ID.
When the park opens its doors in 2012, the company expects to have 800 TEDs available for visitors' use, and will increase that number if necessary. A 15-year plan for the firm also includes opening similar showcase parks in other cities, though details have yet to be determined.
