The Hindu Business Line : Radio frequency ID gaining ground

Rains wreak havoc, cities flood and television anchors scream about lessons that should have been learnt from disasters and from other countries. The pigeonholed track-and-trace technology known as RFID (radio frequency identification) can help, according to Unisys, a $5.7 billion US-based firm.

Evacuees can trust RFID to track-and-trace their family members, causing a lot less heartache. A wrist band containing a lightweight chip; delicate, thread-like copper wires and two antennae on a paper like material, makes up the RFID tag. This can be slapped onto children, elders and family members.

This tag holds a chipset that stores a unique id that it can beam out wirelessly and non-invasively to RFID readers, which are placed on doors or walls. These readers can log hundreds of people streaming through doors simultaneously, unlike bar code’s queuing system. Tags can be reprogrammed, ensuring that the data on the person is updated on a real-time basis. All the information on the tag is logged in a database that can be analysed later or used by other government applications.

With RFID, process efficiencies can be introduced, said Mr Srikanth Raghavan, Director — Software Development, Unisys Global Services — India.

Pilot project

The firm implemented RFID in a pilot project (code-named Hurricane Alicia) in May 2006. RFID was used to track over 20,000 evacuees in a 24-hour period.

“We learnt that people, even during emergencies, will not leave their pets behind. This is when RFID’s advantage of simplicity and flexibility came to use. Pets were tagged with RFID and transported separately, to be reunited with their owners later ,” laughed Mr Raghavan. With bar codes, the scanner needs to be oriented towards the code, but with RFID, tags can be read from a distance of a hundred feet.

RFID is now a strategic focus area for the firm, alongside outsourcing, real time infrastructure and open source. “RFID is going to affect every industry. Compared to Asian counterparts, Indian firms are still lagging behind in implementing RFID,” said Mr Raghavan.

Indian scenario

In India, RFID is chugging up the adoption curve thanks to increasing spends on IT and lowering costs of silicon. An RFID tag is now available from various OEMs for 15-20 cents. More applications that are compatible with and that leverage RFID’s advantages, are also being developed, he said. “Delta costs for RFID-enabling what software and systems you already have invested in, is much lower today,” Mr Raghavan added.

We may not see futuristic applications such as floors that guide the disabled and intelligent postage stamps taking off, but real life examples of usage — especially in times of need — are giving a boost to the technology. Subdued uses are gaining ground, in hospitals to track nurses and patients, and in manufacturing firms to track containers. Unisys currently employs 2,000 and plans to ramp up to 2,800 by year end, primarily adding people in its ITO division (that offers remote data centre management services).