The European Centre of Excellence for Automatic Identification and Data Capture is in Halifax, West Yorkshire. This is a unique, state-of-the-art, commercially-independent knowledge source for promoting radio frequency identification (RFID), barcodes, smart cards and biometrics. Its services include public and private sector training to help harness these innovations. Opened in November 2007, the Centre has already attracted interest from throughout Europe Malaysia and New Zealand. Here, Professor Keith A. Osman, its laboratory director, assesses the impact of RFID on lives throughout the world.

Whether we like it or not, the use and capability of RFID is expanding rapidly across the planet. In the face of  much hype, misunderstanding and confusion about the technology and its applications, I will attempt to dispel some of the myths, and focus on what RFID can and can’t do, as well as indulging in a little horizon scanning.

RFID is a young member of the identification technologies family, which includes the  now familiar “chip and pin” technology on credit and debit cards. In essence, all these technologies hold data that can be read automatically and entered into a computer system to trigger a transaction.

Expressed simplistically, RFID and barcodes replace manual data entry by automatically "typing" very quickly and accurately. The data is then used directly or becomes the key to retrieving records from databases. This is often called a licence-plate application, because of the similarity to looking-up details of a vehicle and owner from its registration number.

Retail
Why all the excitement about RFID? Well, unlike barcodes, tags can be scanned without being visible, and it’s often possible to do this with several at once. That’s because RFID normally holds data in a small computer chip, which is scanned by radio-waves passing through most non-metallic materials, rather than the light and line of sight needed for barcodes.

Being able to push your supermarket trolley through a scanning gate that reads all your purchases and tots up the bill instantly, without you having to queue, may be brilliant - but sadly it is also difficult to achieve. Physics is the problem.

However, your tagged items may also - in the right circumstances - be readable by other devices once you have left the store, which may be less desirable. The good news is  the RFID industry has begun addressing some of these concerns at the design stage, by building tags that "die" when scanned at the checkout.

I’ve concentrated on retail so far, as this is often trumpeted as the main application of RFID. Major store groups, such as Wal*Mart in the USA and Marks and Spencer in the UK, have moved from small scale pilot programmes to widespread roll-out of it, once the obvious business benefits have been proven.

And this is what RFID is actually about in retail: not giving the potential for others to snoop on your personal shopping habits without you knowing, but providing greater visibility of goods moving within supply chains, particularly to reduce out-of-stock items, because empty shelves don't make money.

RFID has, however, a myriad other applications where tags which are invisible and won’t fall off and can be placed inside things; some read-write tags allow data to be added to them by the application. Small RFID tags can be injected into pets, to identify them for the Pet Passport scheme, for example. They are also used in ear or bolus tags, to distinguish farm animals, and have the potential to dramatically reduce lost or misrouted airline luggage, as they can be read more reliably than barcode baggage tags.

Security
RFID has been used in security for many years allowing sophisticated systems of access for specific individuals through data on badge tags. More recent applications include tags acting as seals on lorries: alarms sound if unauthorised entry is attempted, the "journey" is tracked in that all authorised entries are recoded - and the tags are read on the move at gatehouses, thus reducing queues.

Elsewhere new babies in hospital are protected by ankle bands containing tags so that unauthorised movements are detected. This technique is also used to keep track of inanimate assets such as laptops or important documents in offices.

Tags have already been successfully implemented in a variety of different applications Including helping to manage the use of tyres for haulage fleets and racing teams; being set in the ground to provide direction for things such as huge portside cranes and blind people with special readers in their sticks.

One unique area where tags have been applied is in the trade and distribution of Diamonds. The small devices are hidden in brifkas –the diamond industry's term for a paper envelope  - containing a cut diamond and machines can read at up to 200 envelopes a second allowing the precious stones to be monitored and recorded at all stages of transportation.

Most RFID tags are passive: they don’t have batteries and their chips are powered only when appropriate readers are reasonably close, so they don’t transmit like small radio stations, but simply respond to stimuli. Passive tags have a range between a few centimetres and several metres, so one in the label of my underwear would not broadcast my waist size and colour choice to the world at large…or extra large!

Active tags, by contrast, contain batteries and can transmit their data like small beacons, which can be read at ranges of 100 metres or more by suitable receivers. Because such tags can be permanently powered, other devices, such as temperature sensors or GPS receivers, can be attached.

As far as privacy is concerned, the ability to read RFID tags without seeing them has raised concerns that people could be spied on. But simply reading data stored in an RFID tag doesn’t directly compromise privacy, unless this is in some way meaningful. If it’s simply a key for a remote database lookup, it can’t be used to retrieve information when the back-end system is adequately secured. Security and privacy is therefore a database issue, not necessarily concerning RFID tags.

The future
RFID is here and now, and will become more widely used across the world, driven by the very real business benefits that can be derived from its effective application.

The business case for RFID rests upon the ability to recognise opportunities, assess the risks, and to structure and implement a strategy for change that clearly identifies a favourable return on investment. Such benefits include:
• Reduction of supply chain shrinkage
• Opportunities for enhancing item sortation processes
• Flexible manufacturing
• Item identification in condition monitoring
• Reductions in inventory
• Improved asset management and maintenance
• Enhanced field services
• More efficient time-and-attendance management

However, RFID will not, in my view, replace barcodes in the short or medium-term, but will need to co-exist with this mature and widely used technology.

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