RFID Systems Commercially Available for Tracking Individuals

RFID Captures Festival-Goers in Chicago

RFID interrogators installed in Chicago's Ping Tom Park helped the event's organizers learn where attendees of varying demographics spent their time.

December 22, 2009

RFID Journal - The Dragon Boat Race for Literacy is an annual event that typically draws 10,000 participants and spectators to Ping Tom Park, in Chicago's Chinatown. The festival features not only a race between ornate, oar-powered wooden boats, but also musical, dance and acrobatic performances, as well as food. Since 1999, the Chicago Chinatown Chamber of Commerce has hosted the festival, which raises money to support literacy and promote culture and diversity in neighborhood schools.

But this year's Chinese Dragon Boat Race, held on July 25, marked the first time the organizers employed radio frequency identification to track the movement of people throughout the 12-acre city park, in order to measure where individuals of various demographics spent their time.

The RFID system was provided by Lygase RFID Solutions, a Wheeling, Ill., RFID technology company. Lygase's marketing director, Joyce Jeng—as the owner of a business called Asian Social Network—was acquainted with members of the Chicago Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, and was also a race participant. Jeng brought the chamber and Lygase together for the 2009 spring event.

With approval from the Chicago Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, Lygase installed RFID readers at several key locations in the park, as well as at a table at the entryway to distribute RFID tags. Because it was a pilot, Lygase did not charge the chamber for the service, though it did provide the results when the event was completed, according to Ketrus Collins, the company's president and CEO.

For its part, Lygase wanted to test whether it could accurately track the movement of individuals in a crowded venue, so as to gain information about that movement for use by those who participated in organizing the event. By gaining a better understanding of where people go, as well as which attendees tend to go to which locations, the event's organizers could better plan the location of programs throughout the park to improve traffic flow.

What's more, individual vendors—such as those selling food or beverages—could benefit from knowing where customers would be. The system could also enable organizers to see how many people were in a particular location, and thus determine when they may have had an overcrowding problem—especially in hazardous locations, such as on the bank of the Chicago River, where someone could inadvertently be pushed or fall into the water.

On the day of the races, members of Lygase's staff were at the gate as people entered, offering attendees an EPC Gen 2 UHF passive RFID tag (provided by WS Packaging Group) attached to a lanyard, which they could wear around their necks. Those who took tags (a total of 1,500 people did so) and signed their names were also included in a prize drawing, with $50 awarded every half hour. There were five different types of tags—blue for men, red for women, green for senior citizens and yellow for kids, as well as a fifth tag for the actual boat racers.

In the Lygase software, the unique ID numbers encoded on each tag corresponded with one of those five categories. Employees passed out the appropriate tags to each recipient. Within the park, Lygase installed four RFID readers on existing light posts or on tripods, wired to generators in order to provide power. A reader was installed at the playground entrance, at an intersection at the opposite side of the park, on a canopy adjacent to the bandstand and at the river's edge. In this way, Collins says, race organizers created zones within the park, though the majority of the park was not within read range of the interrogators.

"Anyone who crossed into any of those zones was recorded," Collins states.

Lygase installed readers from both Impinj and ThingMagic, to test whether the Lygase software was agnostic and could interpret data from either device. In addition, the company tested the read range and read rate of both interrogators. In both cases, he notes, the team was able to read at a distance of more than 30 feet. Each reader was cabled to a laptop computer that received the ID numbers from all RFID tag that passed within range, as well as the time at which each read occurred. The software identified which of the five categories each RFID tag belonged to, based on those numbers. Data was then stored in the laptops until the end of the day, at which time it was retrieved and the company began analyzing the findings...

Since the pilot, Lygase has made the system commercially available, for tracking individuals as well as the movement of assets at similar venues, including expositions, with RFID readers installed throughout a location and tags attached to valuable assets.

For indoor settings, Collins says, Lygase will install Mojix's STAR readers with eNodes that attach to ceilings and can provide real-time location monitoring throughout an entire exhibit hall or conference area. Each eNode excites all passive RFID tags within its read range (typically, 30 feet), and all are cabled together to form the complete STAR system. In this way, people could also be tracked in real time.

In one scenario, an individual could provide a name and an e-mail address or phone number during registration, and be given a tag linked to that personal data. Thus, booth operators could access that information using Lygase's server, in order to know who had visited their booth. If that individual had not been able to speak with a representative, the company could then e-mail a message to that individual at a later date, offering to provide information...

Louisiana State University Students Craft an RFID Solution for Art Museums

The Exhibition Next system seeks to offer museums a more economical way to provide patrons with information about art being viewed, as well as help the museums to gauge the popularity of their exhibits.

December 29, 2009

RFID Journal - Students and faculty members at Louisiana State University (LSU) have designed an exhibition system using RFID technology that allows museums to track visitors' interests in exhibits, while also enabling those patrons to receive e-mailed messages containing information about the particular exhibits they visited. A prototype of the system was piloted at the LSU Museum of Art for one week in December, says Santanu Majumdar, one of the system's developers. The next step for the researchers, he adds, is to further test the system at other locations, and then gain investment partners and make it commercially available...

Upon arrival at the museum, a visitor goes to a registration desk to pick up a card provided by Canadian RFID technology supplier Phidgets. The card contains a high-frequency (HF) 13.56 MHz tag complying with the ISO 18000-3 standard.

At that kiosk, the patron taps the card against a reader cabled to a computer, after which he or she is prompted to input his or her e-mail address and name, and then pose for a photo taken with a digital camera at that same location. The picture, name and e-mail address are then stored in the Exhibition Next software.

According to Majumdar, the e-mail address enables that individual to request data while walking through the exhibits, which is sent directly to his or she e-mail address, and the photo provides security by linking that individual's face, name and e-mail address. When an e-mail is sent to the patron, his or her picture is sent along with it, which Majumdar believes would deter visitors from providing an incorrect name or address.

Once the card is activated, the user then walks through the museum. Installed next to certain items on display is a kiosk with an RFID reader connected to a desktop computer. If a patron is interested in learning more about a displayed object, or obtaining a picture of that object, he or she can tap the tag against the reader adjacent to that item. In the case of a very large deployment, the system could include a single reader connected to multiple antennas, each installed near an individual exhibit. The card's ID number is then sent via a cabled connection to the computer, where software—designed by Rajesh Shankaran, a graduate student in LSU's department of computer science—looks up the e-mail address associated with that ID number, and sends data specific to that exhibit item directly to that address. The visitor can then immediately access that data on his or her phone with an Internet connection, or view it later on a computer, either at home or at some other location with Internet access. The patron also has the option of watching related information on a video displayed on the computer's screen.

Upon leaving the museum, the patron returns the RFID card to the kiosk. Data about that person is then erased from the software so that a subsequent visitor can use the card...

'Green' RFID Tags May Be Released Within a Year

The Dutch firm indicates the new passive tags will be almost completely biodegradable after use, to reduce waste, while being priced similarly to current tags.

October 15, 2009

RFID Journal - In anticipation of the widespread deployment of RFID technology to consumer applications, a new generation of passive RFID tags is being developed by Smartrac.

According to the Dutch firm, the new tags will be almost completely biodegradable after use, in order to reduce waste, and be priced similarly to current non-biodegradable RFID tags. The first such products could be available within a year, the firm reports.

Smartrac's chief technology officer, Manfred Rietzler, says his company is developing the technology now because it anticipates RFID will soon be adopted in a range of new consumer applications, including ticketing and consumer packaging.

"Our target is to prepare ourselves for the time when RFID transponders will be embedded into more or less any consumer product," Rietzler says.

Amsterdam-based Smartrac—which has approximately 2,600 employees worldwide—currently manufactures RFID inlays used in passports and contactless credit cards, as well as RFID transponders for public transportation systems. The firm is leveraging its expertise in transponder design and manufacturing to develop the biodegradable product line...