Clothing Checks itself Out

Embedded Self Checkout

Asia’s biggest clothing retailer uses mini RFID chips to power self-checkout

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL  in Retailwire    04/07/2023

https://retailwire.com/asias-biggest-clothing-retailer-uses-mini-rfid-chips-to-power-self-checkout/

Asia’s biggest clothing retailer uses mini RFID chips to power self-checkout

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

04/07/2023

Takahiro Tambara, chief information officer at Uniqlo’s parent, Fast Retailing, said mini RFID chips placed in the price tags enable customers to check themselves out of stores. The chips, used to track items throughout the supply chain, have helped significantly reduce out-of-stocks and improve the customer experience in the retailer’s stores. ...   '

A Smart Identifying Finger Ring

 Seems out of place for Fraunhofer,  but the breadth of application is interesting.

Press Release   Fraunhofer

Additive manufacturing

Smart finger ring with integrated RFID chip

Research News / May 03, 2021

House key, wallet, health insurance card, hotel key card — a smart finger ring could replace all these in the future. Produced by a 3D printing process, the ring has an integrated RFID chip, tamper-proof, sealed and invisible. The technology of integrating electronics during 3D printing can of course be used for other applications too. The multifunctional ring was developed by a research team at Fraunhofer Institute for Casting, Composite and Processing Technology IGCV.

Now, where’s my house key — could I have left it in the office? And when we want to pull out our wallet at the supermarket checkout, we often find that it’s somehow made way to the bottom of the shopping bag in all the hustle and bustle. A smart ring could soon put an end to such frantic searches: Concealed inside the ring is an RFID tag that is able to pay at the checkout, open the smart front door, act as our health insurance card when attending a medical appointment or replace the key card in a hotel. It might also be possible to save medical data such as our blood group or drug intolerances on this chip: In an accident, the emergency physician would have all the necessary information to hand. Researchers at Fraunhofer IGCV developed the intelligent ring as part of the MULTIMATERIAL Center Augsburg. The large-scale project, sponsored by the Bavarian Ministry of Economic Affairs, Regional Development and Energy, is divided into ten individual projects — including the KINEMATAM project, which came up with the idea and the demonstrator model of the smart part.

3D printing with automated integration of electronics

More important than the ring itself, however, are the manufacturing process and the ability to integrate electronics while a component is being produced — even at places within the component that would otherwise be inaccessible. The inside of a ring, for example. We can refer to 3D printing in the broadest sense to describe a production process, but in technical jargon, it would be called “powder bed-based additive manufacturing”. The principle is this: A laser beam is guided over a bed of fine metal powder. At the point where the 80 micrometer laser spot hits the powder, the powder melts and then solidifies to form a composite material — the rest of the metal, which is not exposed, retains its powder form. The ring is built up layer by layer, with a cavity left for the electronics. Midstream, the process is halted: A robot system automatically picks up an RFID component from a magazine and places it in the recess before the printing process continues. This precisely controllable production technology is opening the door to a host of possibilities for realizing completely individualized ring designs. And the chip is sealed by the ring, making it tamper-proof.  ... " 

Robot Finding its Way Through Clutter

From the MIT Media Lab

RF Grasp: The robot that finds its way through clutter

MIT Media Lab

Robots are not capable of handling tasks as simple as restocking grocery store shelves as they cannot perceive the environment as good as humans. What if we could give robots radio perception to search for items that are not in their sight? Such an ability will give them superhuman power to work in warehouses, stores, and our homes. 

The Signal Kinetics research group present the design, implementation, and evaluation of RF-Grasp, a robotic system that can grasp fully occluded objects in unknown and unstructured environments. Unlike prior systems that are constrained by the line-of-sight perception of vision and infrared sensors, RF-Grasp employs RF (Radio Frequency) perception to identify and locate target objects throughocclusions, and perform efficient exploration and complex manipulation tasks in non-line-of-sight settings. 

RF-Grasp relies on an eye-in-hand camera and batteryless RFID tags attached to objects of interest. It introduces two main innovations: (1) an RF-visual servoing controller that uses the RFID’s location to selectively explore the environment and plan an efficient trajectory toward an occluded target, and (2) an RF-visual deep reinforcement learning network that can learn and execute efficient, complex policies for decluttering and grasping. 

The research team implemented and evaluated an end-to-end physical prototype of RF-Grasp and a state-of-the-art baseline. They demonstrated it improves success rate and efficiency by up to 40-50% in cluttered settings, and also demonstrate RF-Grasp in novel tasks such mechanical search of fully occluded objects behind obstacles, opening up new possibilities for robotic manipulation.  ...'

MIT Auto-ID Laboratory

MIT AUTO-ID LABORATORY

The MIT AUTO-ID LABORATORY coined the term Internet of Things (IoT) and traces its roots back to 1999 with the founding of the Auto-ID Center, which laid much of the groundwork for the standardization of RFID technology and the introduction of the EPC. Now a member of the global Auto-ID Labs network, it continues to research the evolution and application of RFID systems, as well as other disruptive Internet of Things technologies.   ... '

Lots of links to efforts still underway, industrial directions and related work.

I was reminded of several people there I connected to, including Sanjay Sarma, Jon Stine and Shoumen Pa Datta.  We worked with them at our own innovation laboratories. 

Update on RFID Tags

Related updates for specific RFID applications.    See also continuous updates on this technology.

Vizenex RFID, manufacturing RFID Tags:

Vizinex RFID, which manufactures RFID tags for specific applications, has launched its Sentry Midrange II, the second generation of the company's tag for tracking large metal assets. With a read range of 25 feet when mounted on metal, the Sentry Midrange II allows for the tagging of a variety of assets, the company reports, including reusable containers, oil-field assets and construction equipment.

The Sentry Midrange II is 30 percent smaller than its predecessor, according to the company, but provides a broader frequency response. The tag's optional cover provides extra protection for the RF device and the flexibility to use bolts, rivets or zip-ties for attachment. Industries that use this type of RFID tag include government, military, manufacturing, waste management, rental equipment, and oil and gas. Applications include special transport items, reusable containers, logistics and yard management, and tool and die tracking.  ... "

Apparel Blockchain Tracking

The application here looks at tracking in the supply chain. Linking to RFID efforts is also interesting.

Nike, Macy’s Run Blockchain Trial With Auburn’s RFID Lab in Coindesk
Mar 6, 2020 at 06:00 UTC

Blockchain might help major apparel brands from Nike to Macy’s better share product data across the retail supply chain, according to a white paper Auburn University’s RFID Lab published Wednesday.

The study, named the “Chain Integration Project" (CHIP), saw those retailers and others run Hyperledger Fabric nodes on a slice of their mammoth supply chains. The study found blockchain to be a promising way to share serialized data after following tens of thousands of products including Nike Kids’ Air Force 1 shoes and Michael Kors parkas as they moved between distribution centers.

RFID Lab is one of the most prominent outposts for U.S. retailers’ experiments with emerging supply chain tech, but Blockchain Fellow Allan Gulley said it’s a relative newcomer to distributed ledger technology. And so CHIP, which began in 2018, became a blockchain trial by fire for the Auburn research institute.  ... " 

The Smart Diaper : Now with RFID

Recall just such a proposal, long ago.  Not sure of any patent status.  Some interesting details in the full article below.

Low-cost “smart” diaper can notify caregiver when it’s wet

Design combines a common diaper material with RFID technology.

Jennifer Chu | MIT News Office

For some infants, a wet diaper is cause for an instant, vociferous demand to be changed, while other babies may be unfazed and happy to haul around the damp cargo for lengthy periods without complaint. But if worn too long, a wet diaper can cause painful rashes, and miserable babies — and parents.

Now MIT researchers have developed a “smart” diaper embedded with a moisture sensor that can alert a caregiver when a diaper is wet. When the sensor detects dampness in the diaper, it sends a signal to a nearby receiver, which in turn can send a notification to a smartphone or computer.

The sensor consists of a passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tag, that is placed below a layer of super absorbent polymer, a type of hydrogel that is typically used in diapers to soak up moisture. When the hydrogel is wet, the material expands and becomes slightly conductive — enough to trigger the RFID tag to send a radio signal to an RFID reader up to 1 meter away.

The researchers say the design is the first demonstration of hydrogel as a functional antenna element for moisture sensing in diapers using RFID. They estimate that the sensor costs less than 2 cents to manufacture, making it a low-cost, disposable alternative to other smart diaper technology.  ... " 

RFID Powering of Smart Balls and Tags

An approach utilizing BLE power transmission that we examined and I still follow.

RFID Powers Smart Balls, Luggage Tags  in RFIDJournal

Kookaburra's Smart Balls with SportCor technology using BLE transmissions, as well as British Airways' RFID-enabled luggage tags, are leveraging a wireless transmission solution from Powercast that powers devices, eliminating the need for USB-cabled recharging or, in some cases, batteries.
By Claire Swedberg   Tags: Aerospace, Asset Tracking, BLE, Sensors, Smart Products

Jan 21, 2020—Several technology companies are leveraging radio frequency identification not only to transmit data, but also to power their devices, thereby ensuring consistent performance from sensor-using systems designed to make it easier to find and manage products and assets. Smart sports ball company SportCor has sold its electronics to cricket ball manufacturer Kookaburra and is marketing the product for balls used in a variety of other sports around the world.  ... " 

Will IOT Reinvent the Supply Chain?

We always thought so, starting with the use of the simplest IOT, RFID tagging.  Though it may ultimately require new kinds of ledgers, contracts and modeling that allow advanced modeling of what is happening in the SC and predict  the risk of what may happen.   Some interesting stats of use here.

Will IoT reinvent the supply chain? in Retailwire by Tom Ryan    With further expert comment

While IoT is promising to reinvent the in-store experience with smart shelves, robots and other connected devices, the big early payoff appears to be back in the supply chain.

According to PWC’s “2019 Internet of Things Survey,” supply chain and asset management are retailers’ top priorities for active IoT projects. Almost half (49 percent) of retail respondents indicated they are already benefiting from using IoT solutions to improve their supply chain. Thirty-eight percent expect to see value within two years.

PWC writes, “IoT solutions can monitor and report the exact location, environment, and handling of shipments from a factory or fulfillment center to a retail store or customer destination. This capability offers retailers real-time insights into the handling of an order while it’s en route, while also spotlighting any delays.”  .... " 

Long Term Photovoltaic Sensors Power RFID

Impressive, if exposed to light, could power RFID chips for years.

Photovoltaic-Powered Sensors for the Internet of Things
MIT News
Rob Matheson

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed photovoltaic-powered sensors that could potentially transmit data for years before they need to be replaced, making them useful for Internet of things devices like sensors that gather real-time data about infrastructure and the environment. The researchers mounted thin-film perovskite cells as energy-harvesters on inexpensive radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags. The researchers found that the solar power produced by the cells gives the sensors a significant boost that enables greater data transmission distances and the ability to integrate multiple sensors onto a single RFID tag. The researchers used the sensors to continuously monitor indoor and outdoor temperatures over several days. The devices transmitted data continuously at distances five times greater than traditional RFID tags. Said MIT researcher Ian Matthews, "Our next step is to integrate these same technologies using printed electronics methods, potentially enabling extremely low-cost manufacturing of wireless sensors." .. '

Body Sensors Use Gathered Power

Another example of the use of body gathered power.

Sticker sensor monitors your body using wireless power
It wouldn't interfere with your behavior.

Jon Fingas, @jonfingas in Engadget

Wearable body sensors have a common problem: they need power and antennas, and all that equipment leads to bulky devices that influence your behavior. Stanford researchers, however, have developed a system that could be almost imperceptible. Their BodyNet sticker sensor gathers power and transmits data using an RFID connection to a receiver on nearby clothing, making the sensor itself about as comfortable and flexible as an adhesive bandage. It measures subtle changes in skin that provide a wealth of data for the body, whether it's your heartbeat, breathing rate or muscle activity.  .... " 

Battery-Free Sensors Underwater with Piezoelectricity

Another example of new ways to add power sources.   I recall piezoelectric methods being suggested as gained from customers walking across a floor.  Harvesting electric power.   Too low power in that case, it turned out.   But it continues to be examined, here underwater.

A Battery-Free Sensor for Underwater Exploration
MIT News  By Rob Matheson
August 20, 2019

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a battery-free underwater communication system that uses near-zero power to transmit sensor data. The system makes use of the piezoelectric effect, in which vibrations in certain materials generate an electric charge, along with backscatter, a communication technique that transmits data by reflecting modulated wireless signals off an RFID tag and back to a reader. In the MIT system, a transmitter sends acoustic waves through water toward a piezoelectric sensor that has stored data. When the wave hits the sensor, the material vibrates and stores the resulting electrical charge, which the sensor uses to reflect a wave back to a receiver for decoding. Said MIT’s Fadel Adib, “Basically, we can communicate with underwater sensors based solely on the incoming sound signals whose energy we are harvesting.”  .... '

Nike Links RFID to Predictive Analytics for Inventory

Good example of sensors and analytics and transparency in the supply chain.

Nike to marry predictive analytics and RFID to optimize inventory performance
by Tom Ryan in Retailwire plus expert commentary.

Nike Inc. has acquired Celect, a predictive analytics firm founded by MIT professors, to accelerate its ability to match inventories to consumer needs.

Celect’s cloud-based analytics platform allows retailers to optimize inventory across an omnichannel environment through hyper-local demand predictions. Celect’s team will be integrated into Nike’s operations. Its co-founders will continue as tenured professors at MIT, consulting Nike on an ongoing basis.

“As demand for our product grows, we must be insight-driven, data optimized and hyper-focused on consumer behavior,” said Eric Sprunk, Nike’s COO, in a statement. “This is how we serve consumers more personally at scale.”

In a column for Retail Touchpoints from July, Andrea Morgan-Vandome, Celect’s chief marketing officer, wrote that advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning now provide retailers with a more accurate view of demand across channels to choose the best fulfillment strategy based on product availability, likely demand, capacity constraints, shipping costs, delivery timing and other factors.

At the store level, such insights would reveal that a location seeing high inventory turnover wouldn’t be able to cover walk-in demand if it was also fulfilling online orders. Vice versa, a store seeing slower turnover risks becoming overstocked if it didn’t support online orders.

She wrote, “For each fulfillment decision that needs to be made, advanced optimization can account for the overall margin profitability and customer satisfaction by identifying the immediate payoff versus the long-term opportunity cost — instantly.”   .... ' 

RFID Paper Embeds several Types of Tags

Interesting, flexible application of RFID embedded paper.

In RFID Journal

RFID Paper Turns the Page on Label and Card Printing
ISBC's new standard paper, with embedded NFC, HF or UHF tags, can be designed, ordered and printed according to customer demand, so that the tags can be cut directly from the paper as needed, and at a low cost.
By Claire Swedberg

Jul 09, 2019—Russian RFID technology company ISBC Group has released a solution known as RFID Paper, which is intended to enable companies to inexpensively print customized RFID labels in-house and on demand, as an alternative to label-conversion machines or third-party service bureaus and the long rolls of tags typically purchased from such businesses. Since its release earlier this year, ISBC's HF- or UHF-enabled paper has been used predominantly to print RFID-based cards and badges. RFID Paper can be printed via HP Indigo printers to produce several rows of ready-to-use RFID tags. .... " 

TurboTrack for RFID Robotics and More

Recalling an application we might have used this.

MIT Media Labs Creates Highly Precise UHF RFID for Robotics
The TurboTrack system employs a standard tag and interrogator, as well as a "helper" antenna device that pulses short signals to pinpoint the locations of even fast-moving tags at the sub-centimeter level.    By Claire Swedberg in RFID Journal

Feb 28, 2019—The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Media Lab has completed its testing of a radio frequency identification system known as TurboTrack. The lab's researchers say the solution could enable a new level of flexibility and autonomy for robots in manufacturing processes, as well as in applications such as search-and-rescue.

The TurboTrack system is designed to pinpoint a passive UHF RFID tag's location at the sub-centimeter level, even if it is moving at fairly high-speed. Such a system could make it possible for a robot to understand where a tagged item was located and to respond accordingly—even one flying overhead, as in the case of a swarm of drones. In the long run, the technology is intended to offer a more effective option for managing robotics than computer vision. The group will present a paper on the technology today at the USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation. .... "

Tagging Turns into Sensors

Intriguing, seems the RFID tag needs a redesign.  Reminds me of our long look at tags for product identification in many contexts.    Can their use be broadened in useful ways?

Smart Hacks to Turn Tagging Devices into Internet-of-Things Sensors 

University of Waterloo News

Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Canada have developed a method to hack radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags to turn them into Internet-of-Things (IoT) sensors. The team first removed the plastic cover from the RFID tag, then cut out a small section of the tag's antenna with scissors and attached a sensor across the cut bits of the antenna to complete the circuit. This process gave the RFID tag the ability to sense its environment. The researchers equipped another RFID tag with a phototransistor, a tiny sensor that responds to different levels of light. The team also developed an algorithm on the reader side that monitors changes in the tag's signal. Said Waterloo's Omid Abari, "Our main contribution is showing how simple it is to hack an RFID tag to create an [IoT] device."  .... " 

Food Safety Detection by Consumers

Clever use of RFID tags to detect and evaluate contaminants

Putting Food-Safety Detection in the Hands of Consumers 
MIT Media Lab
By Rob Matheson MIT Lab News

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory researchers have developed a wireless system that uses inexpensive radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags attached to countless products to sense potential food contamination. Comprising the RFIQ system is a reader that detects minute changes in wireless signals emitted from the tags when they interact with food. Certain shifts in RFID tag emissions correspond to levels of certain contaminants within a product; when a wireless prompt from the reader powers up tags, the electromagnetic waves they discharge penetrate the container and are distorted by the content's molecules and ions. The researchers fed these correlations into a machine learning model which, given a new material, can predict both the presence and concentration of contaminants. In experiments, RFIQ detected baby formula laced with melamine with 96% accuracy, and alcohol diluted with methanol with 97%. The research was presented at ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks ... "

Implantable ID Cards

Not new, back again, surveys indicating we are very willing to have them done.

Would you swap your keycard for a microchip implant? For many, the answer is yes

Twenty years ago, in late 1998, a 44-year-old professor in the Cybernetics Department at the U.K.’s University of Reading underwent an unusual procedure. Kevin Warwick opted for an elective surgery in which a radio-frequency identification device (RFID) chip was implanted under the skin on his left arm. Using antennas dotted around his laboratory, Professor Warwick was able to control his surroundings with little more than a Jedi-like wave of his hand. ... " 

RFID Tags as Sensors

MIT Engineers Configure RFID Tags to Work as Sensors 
MIT News

By Jennifer Chu

Researchers in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Auto-ID Lab have developed an ultra-high-frequency (UHF) radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag-sensor configuration that senses spikes in glucose and wirelessly transmits that information. Experiments on ways to turn passive RFID tags into sensors that can operate over long stretches of time without the need for batteries or replacement typically focus on manipulating a tag’s antenna, so its electrical properties change in response to specific stimuli in the environment. The MIT group previously designed an RFID tag-antenna that responds to moisture content in the soil, and another that senses signs of anemia in blood flowing across an RFID tag. Said MIT’s Sai Nithin Reddy Kantareddy, “People are looking toward more applications like sensing to get more value out of the existing RFID infrastructure.” .... ' 

Intelligent IOT Platform

It remains that sensors will be a key part of systems that exist on the Edge: 

IBM, CISCO Collaborate on Intelligent IOT Platform in RFID Journal
A year ago, IBM and Cisco announced a global collaboration to bring business insights to the edge of the network with the Internet of Things (IoT). Since then, the companies have been working to enable businesses to leverage IBM Watson IoT in the cloud, in conjunction with Cisco's Kinetic IoT data-management platform, to derive value from IoT data, no matter where it resides.

The companies have now completed the integration process. IBM's Global Services group and Cisco's IoT group have been focused on helping customers create new sources of value and drive efficiencies via digital transformation. The resultant platform enables businesses to extract, compute and move data, whether at the edge, on premises or in the cloud. The system enables customers to analyze business performance at the point of data collection, so they can monitor and control how their environment, assets and personnel perform.  .... "