New RFID readers from Alien distinguishes between tags

For airlines and cargo handling companies, the inability to know precisely where a specific item was located on a belt could (understandably) prove to be quite the limitation. Thankfully, the gurus at Alien Technology are aiming to add more functionality to a few of its readers in order to nix said quandary. The company recently showcased its Intelligent Tag Radar reader firmware in Las Vegas, which essentially provides its ALR-9900, ALR-9800 and ALR-8800 Enterprise-Class reader platform with the ability to understand "information about the velocity and position of tags, in addition to the contents of tag memory." Furthermore, the included ITR-Singulation features allows the reader to "easily discriminate amongst adjacent tagged objects on a conveyor such as items, cases or airline baggage." One less excuse for lost luggage? Where do we sign?

[Via CNET]

[Aguiluz @ Apr 13th 2008 12:33AM]

Useless when those "baggage handling crew" is the problem.

Seriously, the reason for ALL the lost baggage is the limitation of the peeps to properly route the bags.

[Abuzar @ Apr 13th 2008 12:37AM]

"For airlines and cargo handling companies, the inability to know precisely where a specific item was located on a belt could (understandably) prove to be quite the limitation. Thankfully, the gurus at Alien Technology are aiming to add more functionality to a few of its readers in order to nix said quandary. The company recently showcased its Intelligent Tag Radar reader firmware in Las Vegas, which essentially provides its ALR-9900, ALR-9800 and ALR-8800 Enterprise-Class reader platform with the ability to understand "information about the velocity and position of tags, in addition to the contents of tag memory." Furthermore, the included ITR-Singulation features allows the reader to "easily discriminate amongst adjacent tagged objects on a conveyor such as items, cases or airline baggage." One less excuse for lost luggage? Where do we sign?"

[Deluxe @ Apr 13th 2008 12:56AM]

You fail at blog copy.

[thelittleleaguecoach.com @ Apr 13th 2008 12:58AM]

have baggage, will lose.

[Aguiluz @ Apr 13th 2008 1:17AM]

I never lost any baggage on the airport.

[kyle allen @ Apr 13th 2008 1:27AM]

i am in ur airport, steelin ur bagage

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Apr 13th 2008 1:56AM]

I suspect this works off the Doppler effect with triangulation.

The device sends a ping for a certain tag, calculates the time (or distance) for a reply, then it "pings" two (or more) additional tags in the pile of luggage and then similar to GPS the device triangulates the position of the bags with in the pile and gives a location that is approximate to the bag in question. The more bags (RFID tags) in a pile, the more exact the location information would be.

[mike.westrick @ Apr 14th 2008 7:24AM]

Actuallly the RFID tag measurement is not doppler as the bandwidth of the reader is too narrow. Radio waves travel at the speed of light (300,000,000 meters/sec) which means discerning the time of arrival of tags a few feet apart would require picosecond measurment ability or 100 MHZ plus of IF processing bandwidth (The reader hardware is very narrowband). Rather it is likely an amplitude system that measures the signal increase as it gets closer and signal decrease as it moves further away.

[I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY @ Apr 17th 2008 3:41PM]

You are correct, to use Doppler you would need bags that were in motion. Attenuation would likely be the best method.

[ethana2 @ Apr 13th 2008 2:15AM]

*sigh*
You know those pet tags? Heh.

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2008/04/03/funny-pictures-x-ray-machine-found-something/

[Special_K @ Apr 13th 2008 2:28AM]

No airline I've ever flown (and, mind you, I fly a lot) has ever used RFID baggage tags. They always use barcodes, which, as you can imagine, are not as useful for tracking bags. Maybe this sort of technology will start making RFID tags more widespread.

[Jonathan Buford @ Apr 13th 2008 10:36PM]

Hong Kong International Airport uses RFID for all bags. You get this sticky tag on the outside of each piece of checked baggage.

[Tim @ Apr 13th 2008 3:34AM]

I highly doubt this technology is accurate if it can find both the velocity AND position of an RFID tag.

Okay, that was a really nerdy joke. Don't tell me why it's irrelevant, I know the principle doesn't apply nearly as much to larger particles (IE baggage).

[mjaa @ Apr 13th 2008 2:03PM]

Now you're talking with scalars.

[Barton @ Apr 13th 2008 7:27AM]

HKIA uses RFID...
I wonder how that would work though, and how much it would cost to retrofit a whole airport baggage system with it...

[neuralien @ Apr 13th 2008 8:16AM]

that's nothing new really. Purelink Technology have been able to this for a couple of years now and from what I can tell, they can do it better too.

http://www.purelink.ca

[Pavan @ Apr 13th 2008 8:23AM]

McCarran has been using RFID for awhile now with 99% accuracy, which is way worse than barcodes (that's 1-2 bags per flight!). This is a great step in the right direction though.... I'm still confused why they find it necessary to use expensive writable tags instead of pre-fab tags with a serial number hard-coded into them....then, whenever they are scanned, the sorters can tap into a central database (IATA, are you listening?) to get the relevant info... That or airports should outsource the logistics of sorting to companies such as Fed/Ex, UPS, or Amazon.com

[Nathan @ Apr 13th 2008 10:18AM]

neuralien.... Purelink uses active tags which are significantly more expensive ~$10.00 vs Aliens and other passive tags ~$0.10

I LOVE THE CAPS LOCK KEY.... It uses received power from the tags to calculate distance. Alien has been planning on releasing this for over a year now but apparently finally got the bugs worked out.... I imagine that you only need one antenna for the conveyor belt but 2-3 antennas for 2D-3D location

[mike.westrick @ Apr 14th 2008 7:25AM]

This is correct. Relative signal strength provides a course measurment of distance changes.

[macserv @ Apr 13th 2008 1:25PM]

Screw the luggage... they should use these to keep track of all of the personnel, ground vehicles, and airplanes at airports.

If the position of everything on the ground was fed back to a central computer, we could pretty much eliminate runway incursions and other logistical snafus.

[Lloytron @ Apr 13th 2008 4:12PM]

British Airways need these at Heathrow Terminal 5, ASAP.

Then again, if they ordered them they would just get lost in transit anyway.

[a3rdleg @ Apr 13th 2008 5:37PM]

My significant other works at Alien, I'll have to ask if they can put these into socks. Just imagine a whole new world.

[m1k3y @ Apr 14th 2008 4:54AM]

i thought Sterling said we'd google our shoes, not our socks! :D