RFID Helps Xplor Action Park Photograph Visitors as They Zip By

May 15, 2012When Xplor, a Mexican adventure park located in Riviera Maya, was under construction four years ago, the park's photo manager, Felipe Lorenzo, faced a challenge: how to design a system that could snap dozens or hundreds of photographs of each of the parks' visitors in action, without making them stop and provide their names. The site includes two circuits of zip lines, two circuits for amphibious vehicles, an underground river for swimming beneath stalactites, and two other subterranean rivers for paddling in rafts. Lorenzo wanted to develop automated technology with which a guest could simply be recognized, photographed and offered pictures that he or she could then purchase onsite at the end of the day, or online upon returning home.

Lorenzo's team, led by Quetzal Chilian, the park's new-projects chief, developed a solution that includes passive radio frequency identification tags embedded in visitors' safety helmets, as well as optical sensors and readers installed near automated cameras, and a software system that identifies the optimal time to trigger a photograph and then stores that picture, along with the proper individual's records. Xplor's IT department supplied the software and handled its integration.

The team realized that the park's fast-paced environment, in which visitors would be in motion more than stationary, would not always be conducive to photography. The cameras would need to capture pictures at the point at which zip-line participants take a leap off a tower, or as rafters negotiate passage through a cave. It was deemed too impractical for Xplor's staff to try to capture snapshots at the right moment, and to then try to manually connect each picture with the correct guest. However, because participants would be issued helmets to protect their heads, the team saw an opportunity to use the headgear to track each visitor as he or she moved throughout the park.

Xplor has 1,800 safety helmets, of which up to 1,000 are typically in use on any given day. Three Alien Technology Squiggle EPC Gen 2 passive ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) RFID tags were embedded under the padding inside each helmet, and remain invisible to users.

The park has 32 cameras and 60 Alien RFID readers installed throughout its grounds. In order to ensure that every tag is read, a camera setup may have an interrogator with two antennas, or multiple readers. A variety of optical sensors are also installed at each camera site, including laser beams and infrared (IR) sensors, to trigger a particular camera to shoot a picture. The sensors are necessary to provide greater accuracy in capturing a person's photo as he or she passes a camera. If RFID readers had been used for this task instead of IR sensors, Lorenzo says, the exact instant that an individual comes within range of a camera would be difficult to determine.

When first issued a helmet, a visitor need not provide any personal information. Instead, the tag-tracking software simply identifies that helmet's tag by its own ID number, linking all corresponding photographs with that ID. When an individual approaches a camera—such as while paddling by on a raft—the reader captures the tag's unique ID and forwards that number, along with its own ID, to the back-end software, which triggers a wakeup mechanism in the camera. The individual then passes the optical sensor, and at that moment, the camera snaps a picture. The photograph is stored in the back-end software, linked to the tag's ID number. The nature of the park, Lorenzo says, lends itself to the automated picture-taking system, since people must, by necessity, pass the cameras one at a time—for example, as a visitor dashes down a zip-line—thereby ensuring that only one person is captured in that picture. In some cases, multiple visitors may be aboard a raft or amphibious vehicle; in that case, the picture would include all of those individuals, and would be stored for each person as well.

If a guest stops for a meal at the park's restaurant, an interrogator located at that site reads the helmet's ID number, and automatically begins displaying a preview of some of the photos taken during that individual's visit. When that guest later goes to the photo shop—known as "Rocafoto"—a sales host searches for the ID printed on that visitor's helmet and types it into the system. The visitor can browse through the photographs and either select one to purchase, or opt for a package of all pictures stored on a USB drive, at a cost of $45 per person (or less for larger parties).

Upon exiting the park, visitors remove helmets and toss them down a chute, where an RFID reader captures the headgear's tag ID numbers one final time, thus indicating to the back-end system that those individuals have left the park. The helmets will then be washed, sanitized and assigned the next day to different guests.

Another reader is located near the park's exit. If any visitors have failed to turn in their helmets, the reader captures the missing headgear's ID numbers and triggers an alert instructing those individuals to return to the chute.

In the meantime, the system stores photos for all departing visitors. Anyone wishing to do so can access his or her pictures online, by supplying the helmet ID number assigned at the park. A staff member can write down that number on a coupon for a later visit, and give it to the departing guest.

With the RFID system in place, Lorenzo reports, up to 23,000 pictures are taken daily, approximately 40 percent of which are ultimately sold. The system, he says, enables Xplor to provide photos of a more consistently high quality than would be possible using a manual method—and at a lower cost, thanks to labor savings.

Lorenzo says he is now working to develop a system that could include RFID, for installation at another park operated by Xplor's parent company, Grupo Experiencias Xcaret.