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Radio Frequency Identification (or RFID) is a relatively new technology application that is expanding dramatically as electronics technology becomes more sophisticated, and more importantly, relatively cheap to deploy. Growth of applications of RFID technology is expanding in scope and capability at a breath-taking pace, even for a jaded technology-consuming public.
From an online article at www.rfdesign.com:
“Texas Instruments’ Vice President and General Manager of RFID Business Julie England outlined the company’s strategy to drive RFIDs into many new applications across the enterprise value chain. The company believes that the RFID market is poised to surge from millions to tens of billions of tags over the next five years.”
“The company is nearing a production milestone of 500 million RFID tags and is gearing up to produce billions of chips, straps, inlays and reader modules for retail supply chain, contact-less commerce and pharmaceutical applications.
From RFID News (www.rfidnews.org) comes a report on a study conducting by the Wharton School:
“In a new paper called “An Exploratory Look at Supermarket Shopping Paths,” Fader, Wharton marketing professor Eric T. Bradlow and doctoral candidate Jeffrey S. Larson analyze this RFID-captured grocery store data, focusing exclusively on travel patterns without regard to purchase behavior or merchandising tactics. The results, they conclude, challenge many long-standing perceptions of shopper travel behavior within a supermarket, including ideas related to aisle traffic, special promotional displays, and perimeter shopping patterns.”
From the same source comes the following:
“Magazine Page Tracking — We would hope to use the technology to measure exposure to individual magazine pages — not every page — but some individual pages,” Jay Mattlin, vice president of new ventures at MRI. If successful, the technology promises to revolutionize the way magazine readership is measured in the same way that Arbitron’s portable people meter system could alter the way radio, TV and potentially other media are measured. In its discussions with advertisers and agencies, Arbitron has indicated it might also incorporate RFID technology to measure print media as part of, or in conjunction with its PPM system, but MRI is the first research company to announce an explicit plan to do so.”
The uses for this technology are almost unlimited. From an asset management tool, to a research tool, from stationary such as point-of-sale to mobile applications such as automated inventory counting, the range of realized and potential applications is stunning.
The traffic pattern application referenced in the report on supermarket shopping has as many variations as there are businesses that service customers. Think of how that method could simplify traffic analysis for theme parks such as Disneyland or Magic Mountain. Tracking passenger movement for rapid transit systems provides additional and more accurate information on what elements make up rider-ship and how the riders are actually using the system.
Traffic pattern analysis also applies to, well, traffic. It won’t be too long before sensors will be designed to track traffic 24/7 on city streets, highways, and freeways, and auto and truck manufacturers will install RFID tags as a matter of course. Individual parts and completed vehicles will be tracked from manufacture to disposal. Imagine the level of detail that potentially provides and the different uses.
At bottom, RFID is all about asset tracking, whether that asset is a customer on premise, a battery for a car, or even the pages of a magazine. The potential for abuse is every bit as large as the potential for benefit.
Medical applications and patient care needs suggest further applications. The concern about elderly or diminished capacity patients wandering from care facilities could be greatly alleviated with a technology that allows care-givers to effortlessly find them, or even prevent their leaving the facility in the first place. Much as electronic dog “training collars” or “invisible fences” are used today, systems would alarm if a patient crossed a predetermined boundary which boundary could literally be individualized for each patient.
On the darker side, prison populations could be controlled as far as location and time of day. Individual prisoner’s locations could be tracked literally to the inch, and again, individual boundaries could be established by location and time of day. While there is no such thing as a perfect system, it becomes almost impossible to “beat the system” when a small device is planted under the skin, perhaps in a way that triggers an alarm if unauthorized removal occurs.
This last application undoubtedly illustrates the deepest concerns of civil libertarians. What can be applied to a prison population can also be applied to the general population. Truly, “big brother” is lurking around the corner, and not simply as a bogeyman figure of speech.
It is easy to imagine a “big brother” world where you are never, ever able to enjoy a moment of true privacy. That day may not be very far in our future. Will “big brother” be benign, or will “big brother” be a reincarnation of the KGB or Gestapo? Pay close attention to how this technology evolves. For as sure as technology will continue to expand and advance, RFID will have a major impact on every aspect of our lives in the years to come.
For more information on RFID access the following Internet sites:
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