Millions Required For RFID Research
At last week's RFID Academic Convocation at MIT, leading end users and representatives from academia identified research projects across several industries that will require tens of millions of dollars in investments over the next five years. Among the areas that will require research funds are network protocol standards, specialized tags for airplane and auto parts, applications for micro and nano manufacturing technologies, innovative bio and material sciences development in packaging.
"There is simply an enormous amount of applied research that needs to be done to move RFID forward and realize the dream of creating the Internet of Things," says John Williams, director of the MIT Auto-ID Labs, which hosted the invitation-only event.
The aim of the RFID Academic Convocation, which was attended by 100 leaders in RFID, was to identify opportunities for research collaboration with RFID researchers from around the world, define core technology research areas needed to meet industry RFID requirements and begin a to draw a technology road map for those market opportunities and technologies.
Williams, presented details of an RFID global simulator development effort chartered by EPCglobal Architecture Review Committee under the auspices of the Auto-ID Network Research Special Interest Group (SIG). He said that "the internet of things to make billions of physical objects visible over the web will require a secure and scaleable infrastructure that is more challenging to build than the original internet."
Dick Cantwell, Vice President of Procter & Gamble/Gillette and chairman of the EPCglobal board of governors, challenged attendees to move the EPC network "from PowerPoint to reality."
Alan Thorne of the Cambridge University Auto-ID Labs and Ken Porad, program manager for automated identification programs at Boeing, spoke about the Dreamliner Specifications for RFID and the requirement to equip and test subassemblies with active RFID tags that record maintenance histories, as Airbus and Boeing look to optimize spare parts maintenance management. Given that airplane parts operate under harsh conditions and last for decades, new tags will need to be designed to meet the industry's needs. And methods and standards for synchronizing parts histories on tags and in databases need to be developed.
A panel discussion with Mike Rose, Vice President of Supply Chain for Johnson & Johnson, together with representatives of Thomas Pizzutto, Director RFID Technology & Strategies, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, Ted Ng, Director, Emerging Technology, McKesson and Robert Celeste of the EPCglobal HLS Business Action Group, identified additional RFID research areas requiring collaboration in the Health and Life Sciences sector. These include data sharing, security, serialization, RF effects on chemical bonds and thermal effects, RFID integration with other authentication technologies.
"This was a critical event as industry and academia form a partnership to take RFID forward," says Ted Ng, Director of Emerging Technology for McKesson. "Those of us in industry came away with a better understanding of the research being done around the world, and I think the researchers came away with a better understanding of the needs of the various industries represented at the event."
Stephen Miles, a researcher at the MIT Auto-ID Labs and Conference Committee Chair, estimated that the total cost of the required research could be more than $100 million over the next five years. End users expressed an interest in working with researchers to help fund some of the required research, but more work needs to be done to map out the work that needs to be done.
Bill Hardgrave has been nominated by the Conference Committee to Co-Chair the next RFID Academic convocation with Steve Miles of the MIT Auto-ID Labs, to be held May 1 in Las Vegas in conjunction with RFID Journal LIVE!, a leading RFID industry conference and exhibition. RFID researchers who are interested in participating are invited to join one of the research areas identified at the Convocation or to initiate a new sponsored research area by going to the RFID Academic Convocation On Line Community web site hosted by MIT Auto-ID Labs at http://autoid.mit.edu.