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June 16-30, 2001 MARVELS |
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RADIO TAGS Shopping Gets Smarter The ultimate goal is to put a radio tag on virtually every manufactured item, each tracked by a network of millions of readers in shops, factories, trucks, warehouses and homes, transforming huge supply chains into intelligent, self-managing entities. By Indrani Rajkhowa
Enticing Customers Future smart tags will be able to tell manufacturers when to restock store shelves, then entice consumers to buy products. All that will be made possible by a network of smart tags containing tiny microprocessors, wireless antennas, and flat and flexible batteries. The new tags will carry an electronic product code able to identify more than 268 million manufacturers, each with more than 1 million unique products. And these smart tags will use wireless radio-frequency technology similar to that in automatic toll-collection systems, with the aid of which they can be read from any angle. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is at the focal point of the smart-tag revolution. The MIT Auto ID centre is developing the language and network scaffolding its corporate partners will use in smart tags brimming with information about where an individual bottle of beer, for example, is at any given time in the distribution channel. Smart labels one day might allow store clerks to identify and ring up sales for grocery and other items without removing them from customers' shopping carts. Manufacturers hoping to get back some of the billions lost every year to theft, counterfeit and depleted stocks have been closely watching the technology that promises to track the locations of individual products, from perfume bottles to car parts, in real time. At the heart of this scenario is a little device called a "radio frequency identification tag"-a silicon chip that boots up and transmits a signal when exposed to the energy field of a nearby reader. The ultimate goal is to put a radio tag on virtually every manufactured item, each tracked by a network of millions of readers in factories, trucks, warehouses and homes, transforming huge supply chains into intelligent, self-managing entities. "The bar code's limitation as it currently stands is that it has to be manually scanned," Sanjay E. Sarma, an MIT professor and director of the Auto-ID Center, said. "On the shelf, the code is useless. By replacing bar codes with electromagnetic tags, companies will be able to monitor product movement continually, from manufacturer to disposal, in real time. Eventually, shoppers will bypass checkout counters altogether, as their tagged purchases are automatically debited to their accounts on their way out the door." Smart labelling also means that manufacturers would know when and what consumers are buying, making management simpler and efficient. Intelligent Shopping If the MIT centre's vision comes true, by 2010, a consumer at work may be able to dial home via the Internet to see if his or her refrigerator contains all the ingredients to concoct a dish of pepperoni pizza. If not, the refrigerator will pass a long a list of missing items to the local supermarket, which will make sure the noodles, sauces and cheese are waiting in a shopping cart when the customer arrives. Checkout is just as easy: Shoppers need only roll their carts out the door and pack their groceries. By then the intelligent shopping trolley will have tallied all the items, and a swipe of the consumer's own smart card will debit the bill automatically. At home a smart tag can tell a smart range to prepare the dough, and have the oven preheat itself just in time to bake the pizza. The Drawbacks One of the greatest challenges facing the creators of such an infrastructure will be finding ways to allow consumers to opt in or out of the system as it becomes more pervasive. "It's not clear how that's going to happen," he says. "But it's important if companies want to prevent a public backlash against these systems." In some ways, the technology itself has certain limitations that minimise privacy concerns. The range of a tag seldom exceeds five metres. The tags cannot be read through walls or thick barriers. What's more, Electronic Product Codes identify objects, not people. The only way for a manufacturing company to link the two is through an automatic debiting system or credit card, for which the consumer will have to give consent. Sarma says that privacy and security are concerns at the Center, adding that industrial uses, for which these issues are minimal, will lap up these tags much before consumer applications. |
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It's
a silent revolution, and it's coming to the superstore near you. With the
wave of a hand-held scanner, supermarket racks stacked with silent and
immoblie canned goods and detergents will come alive, each abuzz with
electronic information about its exact location, directions for use,
shelf-life and recycling. A can of baked beans may even be able to alert
the store personnel that it's being shoplifted! Developers call them smart
labels-tags embedded with microchips and attached to goods that can
transmit data and instructions to suppliers' and retailers' computers. But
just how smart are they?
