Auto-ID

in a nutshell

Auto-ID is a tagging-system similar to the well-known barcodes but it's read without contact via radio-waves

institutes and companies

The headquater of development for Auto-ID is the M.I.T. and its sister lab in the Univerity of Cambridge

Some Companies involved: Sun Microsystems, Coca-Cola, Intel, Kimberly-Clark, SAP, UPS, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., ...

why?

The universal product code (U.P.C.) also known as barcode was developed in 1973. It was designed for 25 years, thus we its now out-dated. An other disadvantage of the barcode is, it must be rad manually

scenario: You walk into a shop, put your chocolate or whatever you want in you jacket, walk out of the door and you product get paid and the stock gets checked too. You don't have to wait for an old lady before you counting the coins or whatever .. and the it's easy for the shop to keep their products in stock. There're other advantages. We'll talk about them later.

How Auto-ID works

Auto-ID works similar to the alarm-tags already used today, which activates an alarm if it doesn't get deactived after paying the product (or if you just don't pay at all). The concept it taken from a technology of the US-military developed in the 1940ies. The military-aircrafts got tagged, so it could be decided if an aircraft is a friend o foe.

tagging

the electronic product code (ePC) gets generated. This is an unique code for the product. The ePC gets saved on a smart-tag. A smart-tag is a microchip with an antenna and a small capacitor. This one gets sticked on the product for i.e. on a can, thus the can becomes unique.

reading

And electro-magnetic field loads the capacitor. The load of the capacitor is enough energy for the microchip to send out a signal with its ePC. This one gets read and with a computer in the LAN or internet the ePC can be translated to usefull information stored in the product markup language (PML)

ePC

The ePC is similar to a barcode, but it's bigger (barcode: 12digits/circa; ePC: 96bits). The object name service (OSN) translate the ePC in an internet-adress for the PML-file for the product.

PML

The physical markup language (PML) describes the parts of the product, its lengths, mass, et cetera. It can also describe transport vehicles, its containers and the items in the containers in a topdown model

The ePCs and the linked PMLs could be saved on CDs (i.e. weekly) as a backup) if the interner connection fails

What Auto-ID can do

Auto-ID in general may redefine the way things are made, bought and sold. Let's look on the different fields.

Consumer

products that communicate

product may provide cooking instructions for the microwave-oven, supply-informations to the refrigator or fabric-care instructions to the washing machine.

shopping on-demand

The refrigator may order food autmatically as it runs out.

increase human safety

medications can warn of harmfull combinations

....

consumers can get information about products via a PDA or cell phone at the shop before buying it

Business

information about inventory

The shop may get precise and detailed information on when, where and by whom an item was made.

production/delivery on-demand

The manufacturer knows when an item leaves the factory and when it gets sold. This increases the accuracy with which products are made, shipped, delivered, and stocked. This leads to an enhanced costumer sevice.

...

Businness may save billions of dollars or euros, nowadays get lost because of lost, stolen or wasted products

Enviroment

waste reduction

smart products gets reused throughout the suplly and demand cycle. Used products may be moved back to the manufacturer. Which also leads to ...

recycling

Nowadays waste can't be identified. With auto-id it an be sorted and re-used easly.

Security Issues and other problems

tracking

Everyone could be tracked via the tags on the items (i.e. pornography). But the tag-reader must be near the smart-tag. The detailed information (via PML) get also restricted, thus not everyone may get every infotmation. An solution (for paranoids) could be to destroy or throw away the smart-tags

cheating

A false smart-tag could send an other ePC-code. A possible solutions for shops is to only accept ePC-codes of products in stock.

expensive

One smart-tag still costs about 20 cents, but researches think development may lead to costs less a penny/tag