Dolphin RFID, an India-based developer of radio frequency identification and security solutions, has launched two products intended to bring visibility to very different industries. One solution enables the tracking of maintenance performed on equipment or parts, while the other provides management of tourists and baggage for private tour companies. The five-year-old firm announced the two new solutions, each using Android phones to read data on tagged items, at the RFID Journal LIVE! 2014 conference and exhibition, held last week in Orlando, Fla.
With Dolphin’s Maintenance Management Module, users can dispatch maintenance personnel to remote sites, and update data about the work they have performed, as well as the location or condition of a piece of equipment, using only their NFC-enabled Android phone and an app. With Dolphin’s Mobile Tour Management System, tour operators can track the locations of clients and their luggage via a combination of Near Field Communication (NFC) and active RFID technologies.
Suresh Sawhney, Dolphin RFID’s president and CEO, spent 26 years with the Indian Navy, serving as an electrical engineer. During that time, he learned about the use of RFID technology—which, he says, “then got into my blood.” Sawhney launched an electronic security company using RFID for access control, which he sold to Ingersoll Rand. He then launched Dolphin RFID in Mumbai, in 2008, naming the firm after the marine mammal that, he says, “is the friend of sailors.” The company offers middleware and software to manage readers, as well as the data collected from those devices, in a variety of applications. It now offers full solutions for vehicle monitoring, hospital asset management, library-book tracking and other use cases. In recent years, Dolphin began looking into NFC technology to enable users to employ their smartphones as readers, managing apps provided by Dolphin; most recently, it released the two solutions for maintenance and tourism.
The Maintenance Management Module is designed to provide a relatively low-cost means of tracking specific items requiring maintenance. The companies managing the equipment or employing maintenance workers would first apply an NFC tag to each item, and then link that tag’s ID number to the specific item and its history for inspection and maintenance, as well as the location at which that object should be.
Individuals responsible for inspecting, maintaining or servicing an item would download the Maintenance Management Module app (available via a private server from Dolphin RFID) to an Android smartphone with a built-in NFC reader. That app would enable them to manage data related to each tag read. Prior to servicing an item, a worker would interrogate its tag, and the app would display that item’s history, along with any pictures or other media associated with that particular ID number. The employee can input which services are being provided, and take a photograph which is then linked with the service. The app automatically records the location where those tasks took place, based on the phone’s GPS reading, and the phone forwards that information to a server where management can access it as needed.
The tourist solution is a hybrid system that utilizes Syris Technology Corp.‘s SYTAG245-2C active 2.4 GHz RFID tag in the form of a badge, and passive NFC RFID baggage tags. A tour operator would provide each individual in a group with a badge tag, which measures 86 millimeters by 54 millimeters by 6 millimeters (3.4 inches by 2.1 inches by 0.2 inch). When issuing a tag to a client, the tour operator could input that individual’s name and cell phone number into the Mobile Tour Management System app, as well the names of other members of that tour group, all linked to the ID number encoded to that tag.
An NFC tag would also be attached to each piece of that client’s luggage, and those tags’ unique IDs would be linked to that person’s information in the Dolphin app, which is stored on the phones of the tour operator’s staff. The Syris SYRDBT-Xt handheld RFID readers, provided by Dolphin, can read the 2.4 GHz badge tags at a distance of up to 20 meters (66 feet), and forward the collected read data to the tour guides’ phones via a Bluetooth connection. Once it is time for all tourists to return to the bus with their luggage, a tour guide can use the active RFID reader to ensure that all tourists assigned to that bus have arrived. The app will display an alert if anyone has not returned, and that person’s name and photo can then be displayed, along with the names of other group members who might know where he or she is. The app can offer the option of sending a text message to that individual’s phone asking that he or she to return to the bus. If the missing person does not respond, the tour guide can place a phone call.
The NFC reader on the tour guide’s phone can be used to ensure that all luggage has been received on the bus before the vehicle leaves a hotel or other site. The app displays any missing items, matched with the tourists who own them, and the tour guide can inform those individuals of the baggage left behind, either via a phone conversation or in person.
The tourist solution is currently being used by tour company Cox and Kings, Sawhney says. Both solutions, he adds, are being marketed in India, the United States and other regions.