Tech Watch | InfoWorld Staff » RFID is smarter than some columnists think

November 16, 2005 | Comments: (0)

RFID is smarter than some columnists think

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Much as I hate to disagree with a fellow InfoWorld columnist, I find it necessary to do so today.
Tom Yager, in his rant against RFID, cited the following as his main reason for his antipathy to the technology.

"I have a lot of reasons for being no fan of RFID, but RFID has one serious, show-stopping shortcoming that trumps the others: It’s stupid. A passive RFID tag is incapable of learning, logging, sensing the world around it, or doing anything on its own. If the tag is separated from the reader, or the reader is separated from the back end, the system is going to miss something."

So as Yager states, "an RFID tag is incapable of learning, logging, sensing the world around it, or doing anything on its own."

Yes, well, that's like calling the eye stupid. It takes a picture of the world around it but can do nothing with that information.

The eye alone can't learn, log, or sense the meaningfulness of what it sees in the world around it, or is it capable of doing anything on its own.

The eye needs to be connected.

The same is true of RFID. It needs to be connected to a database that takes the identification information, just like a license plate number, and match it to thousands of pieces of data about the item so identified.

Then, using an application that is connected via circuitry ultimately to a microprocessor, it can even make decisions about what to do with that data.

For example, RFID tags on pallets of lettuce sitting on the dock at Ningbo, China get identified and when the reader sends the information back to the server it might also be time stamped. Now a sensor reads the temperature at the dock. This too is sent back to the server.

The software analyzes and puts one event [time of arrival of lettuce] next to the other event [temperature] and lo and behold the owner of all those heads of lettuce gets an alert saying his perishable lettuce has been on the dock for 36 hours in 80-degree Fahrenheit.

Now a decision has to be made. Should the lettuce be loaded for shipment or should he take it back and sell it locally?
And it all starts with RFID. Not so dumb is it?

Posted by Ephraim. Schwartz on November 16, 2005 01:41 PM

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