- In Singapore, cars "talk" to the streets they
drive on. In Tulsa, retailers test a system that lets products inform the
store when they're bought. In home kitchens later this decade, frozen dinners
might automatically give cooking instructions to microwaves.
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- The Internet revolution was about people connecting with
people. The next revolution will be about things connecting with things.
And it's taking shape in pockets around the globe. For the first time,
big players such as Wal-Mart, Gillette, and Procter & Gamble are joining
to give the technology serious momentum. In a twist, this next technological
chapter won't emerge out of ever-more-powerful computers and faster Internet
connections. This shift comes from the opposite direction.
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- It will ride on pieces of plastic the size of postage
stamps, costing a nickel or less. Each tag will contain a computer chip,
storing a small amount of data, and a minuscule antenna that lets the chip
communicate with a network. In time, when billions of tags are out there
and communicating, the technology will infiltrate business and everyday
life to a greater extent than today's personal computers, cell phones or
email. In decades to come, its impact might be as fundamental as the invention
of the light bulb. Those tags will someday be on everything < egg cartons,
eyeglasses, books, toys, trucks, money, and so on. All those items will
be able to wirelessly connect to networks or the Internet, sending information
to computers, home appliances or other electronic devices.
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- Grocery items will tell the store what needs to be restocked
and which items are past their expiration dates. The groceries will check
themselves out in a split second as you push a full cart past a reader.
A wine lover could look on a computer screen and see what's in her wine
cellar. Prescription drug bottles could work together to send you a warning
if the combination of pills you're about to swallow would be toxic.
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- "Any single one of these (tags) is like a one-celled
organism. They're just smart enough to say their own name." Like cells,
their power will come from billions of them working together.
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- Auto-ID at MIT is the program backed by Wal-Mart and
the other blue-chip companies, and is trying to create a standard, like
Internet protocol, for the tags' communication. That would enable any tag
to connect to any network, much as any PC can work on any network. The
technology doesn't really have a handy name. The tags are known as radio
frequency identification tags, or RFID. The Auto-ID center calls the core
of its standard "ePC," which stands for Electronic Product Code.
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- RFID has been around awhile. During World War II, the
military used a high-powered, bulky version of it to identify friendly
aircraft. Starting in the 1970s, the federal government stuck RFID tags
on nuclear materials to better track them. In the 1980s, commercial warehouses
used it to locate loaded pallets.
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- These days RFID shows up in a few familiar places. The
technology is in Exxon Mobil's Speedpass < a key fob that works like
a credit card, wirelessly identifying you to a gas pump. On highways across
the USA, wireless toll booth systems such as E-Z Pass work on RFID.
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- Singapore relies on the technology to control traffic.
Its system, called Electronic Road Pricing, or ERP, charges different prices
to drive on different roads at different times. Driving on one main artery
between 0830-0900 costs $3 (in Singapore dollars < US $1.60) but is
free 1400-1730. The pricing encourages drivers to stay off busy roads at
busy times. Every car must have an RFID tag, which communicates with readers
along every major road. The road readers identify each car and send information
to a central computer, which adds up car owners' bills. Until now, the
tags have been too expensive for anything but specialty applications like
E-Z Pass and Singapore's ERP. One tag costs about $1 < hardly worth
pasting to a $3 frozen dinner or even a $20 bottle of wine.
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- But a small, private California company called Alien
Technology is pioneering mass-production methods that will radically reduce
the cost. Later this year, Alien will take orders for 500 million tags
at a time, selling each tag for just under 7 cents. One such 500 million-tag
order would exceed all the RFID tags ever made. The Auto-ID center figures
the tags must get down to 5 cents each. Tag prices won't drop to 5 cents
until at least 2005. At 7 cents, major companies consider the technology
promising. At 5 cents, it would start rolling out into business applications.
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- Arno Penzias < a Nobel prize-winning scientist, one-time
head of Bell Labs and an investor in Alien Technology < has a favorite
microcosmic scenario: You lose your eyeglasses. They've fallen under the
family room couch. The tag on the eyeglasses connects with a reader in
the family room < readers would be all around a house. The reader is
also getting signals from everything else in the room. You sit at the computer
and type in a search box: "Where are my eyeglasses?" The computer
spits back: "Under the couch."
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- On a more practical level, the industry is watching a
test in Tulsa. Several stores and manufacturers agreed to put tags throughout
the supply chain, so the tags are on crates of products, in trucks, at
loading docks, and all around warehouses. The companies involved are being
kept secret, though two seem to be Wal-Mart and Pepsi-Cola. Industry watchers
say the technology has been working better than expected. The Auto-ID Center
figures that testing will go on until 2003, when the technology will start
to flow into commercial uses. In 2005, it will start to be widely adopted
by business. Early-adopter consumers could bring RFID into homes around
that time.
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- A study by research firm Venture Development found that
RFID will be a $1.4 billion industry in 2002, climbing to $2.6 billion
in 2005. If so, it will still be only a speck in the overall technology
sector.
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