2004 may prove to be the year of the shakedown for the RFID industry. Matrics, a leading developer of EPC systems, has consistently placed itself at the center of the controversy as the target of two lawsuits and a monumental buyout. The buyer, beleaguered giant Symbol, is in the midst of a corporate awakening that […]

By Shin’ichi Konomi of RFID in Japan A month has passed since Japanese wireless carrier NTT DoCoMo launched a service allowing consumers to use their phones as a mobile wallet. Early adopters are making the devices’ characteristic “jingling” at the checkout counters of convenience stores across Japan. While the service seems destined to introduce a […]

By Jie Weng, co-founder of ChinaRFID.org In the past two years, RFID has been pushed to the forefront of emerging technologies. IDC predicts that RFID related spending for the U.S. Retail Supply Chain in 2005 will approach $800 million dollars. A key impetus to the widespread adoption of RFID is the standardization efforts originally pushed […]

Prisons are becoming safer places thanks to a new RFID based tracking program. More than 10 years in the making, one such system has its roots in technology originally developed by Motorola for the U.S. Department of Defense. Now licensed by Technology Systems International, the TSI PRISM solution grants wardens ubiquitous, mandatory and real time […]

” The U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded $615,000 to the state Agriculture Department for a pilot study to track cattle using radio frequency identification, or RFID, tags attached to the ear. Pennsylvania is one of 29 states participating in the 12-month study. State Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolf said the technology promises to allow animal […]

“Cypak AB, a company developing radio frequency identification, processing and communication technology applications, has received 30 million Swedish Krona (about $4 million) from the Swedish Industrial Development Fund and IT Provider, a venture capital group. While other RFID companies have pursued RFID sensors working with fixed infrastructure, Cypak wants to embed RF powered microcontrollers in […]

“Another project of particular interest was the interaction of RFID tags between a cellular device and a wearable personal accessory, such as a wristwatch or bracelet. The wristwatch is embedded with an RFID reader. When someone picks up an object with an RFID tag in the physical world, such as a book, the wristwatch reads […]

RFID Journal – Self-Checkout Gets RFID Upgrade “To demonstrate how RFID tags on individual products can speed customers through checkouts, retailing technology provider NCR has installed an RFID-enabled self-checkout register at Metro Group’s RFID Innovation Center in Neuss-Norf, Germany. To create what NCR says is the world’s first self-checkout solution with an integrated RFID reader, […]

“The first biometric passports will be phased in progressively from 2005. Biometric passports and visas are intended to improve authentication of the documents themselves and not, at least in the short term, to identify potential terrorists by means of automatic comparison between the individual and a blacklist of people stored on a distant server. That […]

“[Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs’] Radio Frequency Identity and Geometry (RFIG) system consists of a hand-held projector that shines dynamic images onto physical objects of the user’s preference, and radio frequency identification tags augmented with photosensors, which identify objects for the projector. Radio frequency identification tags contain tiny, inexpensive chips that are read using radio waves. […]