Nov 11, 2020XO2Tech, a technology startup based in Spain and the United States, has developed a wireless system employing radio frequency identification technology and sensors to help manage the activities and conditions of the elderly or other individuals as they interact with items in their home or care facility. The company, founded by entrepreneur Edward Espinosa, started with a concept of an RFID-enabled vacuum drawer, but now it aims to include a family of RFID- or other Internet of Things (IoT)-based products and applications that leverage RF transmissions to not only identify a tag, but also understand the conditions around it. That means monitoring everything from an individual's pulse rate to the presence of chemicals, or detecting fraudulent products.
Several of the solutions, based in part on a handful of research projects being carried out at U.S. universities, now have patents and pending applications, though they are not yet built or tested in prototype version. XO2Tech hopes to team with technology firms that can help bring the products to market following testing and marketing. The company's cloud-based RF Tracker application can be used with Intelligent Voice and RFID assistants (devices with built-in speakers and RFID readers), or a handheld RFID reader or a Near Field Communication (NFC)-enabled smartphone. Readers could also be built into smart refrigerators or other appliances.
Edward Espinosa
A user would place UHF RFID tags at strategic locations, such as on packages of food or on household items or prescription bottles, in order to track the use of items or products, or the movements and activities of a resident, such as an individual with Alzheimer's. The application detects not only a tag's ID number, but also any conditions affecting the RF field, so that other analytics become possible, including the ability to understand when a person is touching or in close proximity to a tag, or whether a fresh food item is spoiling. What all the solutions have in common is their use of sensor data with RFID for wireless intelligence.
"XO2Tech is designed to provide contextual sensor data for user interaction monitoring and tracking," Espinosa says, adding that the solutions "can also be employed in retail, work, home or healthcare applications." In each case, he notes, tags are powered by an interrogator, and thus no batteries are required for them to operate. As RFID and NFC use has become more prevalent, Espinosa reports, he has been working to develop systems to provide added value beyond simply capturing tag ID numbers, in order to "provide use and business models for more pervasive adoption of RFID tag usage."
Espinosa conceived of the RF Tracker technology in 2002 while caretaking his parents, both of whom suffered from cancer. He began seeking a way to enable RFID technology to help caregivers and patients improve their lives and treatments with automated data, without requiring manual efforts, and he sought to create a solution that could provide that information without the intrusion of cameras.
The Artificial Intelligence Caregiver, the latest solution being patented by Espinosa, is intended to provide a solution for the elder-care market. RFID tags would be applied to consumer goods, food products, household items in a refrigerator or panty, or prescriptions, or to a wall or furniture, to detect the activities and movements of an individual within a given environment. The tag would be interrogated by the RFID reader unit, which is portable and can include a speaker so that relevant alerts or recommendations can be spoken to the user based on the collected read data.
Periodically, the reader would interrogate tags within range, and those tags—whether on a doorknob, a toothbrush or a medicine bottle, for instance—would respond with their unique ID numbers. If someone picked up or touched one of the tagged items, his or her body would physically alter the RF transmission. The application would detect and record that change and identify that the resident was touching the tagged item, while also measuring the time of the event. That information could indicate that the individual was, for example, leaving the home, brushing his or her teeth, or taking a medication.
The application captures each transmission and can store that data, as well as provide analytics on a dashboard, send notifications and suggest the next step of action. To maintain an individual's routine adherence, for which notifications are provided, users can set up a routine of activities that an individual is expected to complete, such as eating after taking a medication or brushing his or her teeth after eating. "The system is designed for either simple or complex interaction of contextual inferences," Espinosa says, "using single or multiple RFID tags."
The application used with the tag and reader will be able to predict and guide user interactions, Espinosa explains. The AI system draws from research conducted by MIT and Cornell University researchers, he says, and is designed to be discreet. Users can simply place tags where they want to monitor activities, then enter details about the item being tagged in the software or app. In another use case, the RF Tracker application can track such details as a body's vital sign activity. With the Well-Being Mode, an individual can wear an RFID tag in the form of a wristband or lanyard, or it can be embedded in a garment.
The application can be configured to detect a person's heart-respiration rate, blood pressure, breathing rate or movement during specific interactions, situations or routines, as well as transmit that data to a reader when interrogated. The software manages the collected information, analyzes such data as accelerated heartbeat in order to detect early signs of health issues, and issues alerts to healthcare providers or other authorized parties if any problems are identified. The body vital sign detection feature is based on research also conducted by Cornell University and MIT regarding RF sensing of respiratory rate, respiratory volume and heart rate.
Typically, UHF RFID readers with speaker units would be deployed in task-compliance areas, Espinosa says, with one or more arranged around a household. Another version of the Intelligent Voice and RFID assistant solution, known as The Sentient, offers food freshness monitoring and RFID ordering. With these features, users can employ NFC or 13.56 MHz HF RFID functionality in a smartphone and an app, or UHF RFID technology leveraging the RFID reader in their home refrigerator to capture a warning if a product may need to be discarded, or to simply view what products are being used.
The RF Tracker application could detect product gas or chemicals or composition, in part employing another sensor system stemming from the work of MIT chemistry professor Timothy Swager, which led to a spinoff company called C2Sense (see Startup to Pilot Low-Cost Wireless Sensor Technology). Additionally, XO2Tech has patented what it calls the RF Order Tag, an RFID label with an inexpensive sensor similar to the C2SDense tag technology, used with an app and cloud-based software.
The RF Order Tag comes with a physical seal that covers the sensor to prevent that sensor from being over-activated until the cover is removed. In that way, a product could be sold with the RF Order Tag, and the consumer who buys the product, such as a food item, has the choice of whether or not to remove the cover to expose the sensor portion of the tag. When interrogated via an NFC-enabled phone, the uncovered tag sensor could automatically reorder a product, or learn more about it or view its freshness status. The RF Order Tag, in the meantime, could be interrogated throughout the supply chain for inventory-management purposes.
"It's a way to democratize the ordering of goods and their supply chain and inventory management," Espinosa says, because of the system's simplicity. The elderly and other users who are not tech-savvy could easily reorder a product with their phone, he adds. A version of the Intelligent Voice and RFID assistant solution, known a Portable Smart Home, also includes other kitchen and smart-home applications. Espinosa intends the solutions to be offered as out-of-the-box technology that can include a package of tags, a reader (if required), and applications and software. The company is now in the process of seeking partners to build and test the products prior to commercialization.
