Downloads

RSS

By Ken Lynch, Director of Marketing, ThingMagic, Inc.

The history of communications has progressed from human/human through human/machine to machine/machine interchange. The long evolution of each of these modalities has undeniably had a profound impact on human civilization. The last frontier in this saga is to connect the physical world to the world of machines. Physical objects coupled with a myriad of radio technologies are driving this revolution. For instance, a modern multi-band mobile phone contains at least eight different radios — receiving location information from GPS satellites 26 kilometers above the earth to as close as a Bluetooth headset in your ear 1 meter away - all within the same personal communication device.

In the past 10 years, we've gone from a world in which very few knew of RFID, to one in which the hype of the technology exceeded practical adoption rates, to today, where RFID and Sensing (RFIDS) is found in automated data collection, identification, and location systems worldwide. There are many types of RFIDS technologies. From Active RFIDS to ZigBee, each offers benefits across a variety of parameters including performance, standards maturity, and complementary hardware components and software applications. Solutions enabled by these technologies are addressing familiar needs across many industries including locating high-value assets in hospitals, improving item level inventory in retail stores, and tracking vehicles and goods in transit to improve supply chain management. Much more intriguing though, are the growing number of innovative solutions where users and consumers can naturally interact with RFIDS and where the technology is so integrated and transparent that it disappears into its environment.