June 8, 2005
UPS wearables & barcodes vs. RFID
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| Symbol's WSS 1000 (the non-wireless, old version) |
This month's Technology Review has a brief article on how UPS has upgraded their Symbol Technology ring-scanner wearable computers to use Bluetooth and Wi-Fi instead of a wire to an arm-mounted computer. The article is missing a few details (most notably it makes it look like Symbol came in to oust some other vendor's system, when in fact Symbol made the old system too), but it is a nice update on one of the early commercial wearable computer success stories.
One bit in the article that I found interesting was UPS's comment on barcodes vs. RFID:
Robert Nonneman, a manager of industrial engineering at UPS, says the company has watched RFID for 15 years but doesn't see it as an imminent solution to the problem of parcel tracking. In test runs, he says, RFID tags did not surpass the accuracy rate of bar code scanners. And an RFID rollout--including tags and a new technological infrastructure--would be costly. "You can't simply replace optical scanners with an RFID reader and expect an improved return on investment," he says. "There have to be process changes to leverage the technology."
I remember years ago Dick Braley from FedEx talking about the possibility of using RFID to ping a room full of packages and determine which (if any) need to be shipped out that day. That sort of room-flooding is a very different application than scanning a single package, and is one that barcode-readers will have a hard time performing, but it sounds like it's either not what UPS needs, would require a huge upgrade path or just not available yet from RFID technology.
Posted by bug to Wearable Computing at June 8, 2005 11:03 AM | TrackBackI think the problem with the "ping a room of packages" scenario is the last step of actually finding the package that replies "ship me!". It's funny, sometimes you hear people talking about RFID applications that require talking to a roomful of tags at the same time. Other times, you hear about passive tags that need to be right up next to the reader (just as close as a barcode scanner).
The latter scenario is the realistic one at the moment---and it is in these areas where RFID is being deployed.
(excluding freeway pass systems, which solve the "last meter" problem by attaching themselves to objects that are so big as to make it obvious who is being addressed at the moment).
Maybe one day we'll have tags that can be addressed from a distance and can point out where they are to meter or submeter precision. This kind of tech will definitely cause significant privacy concerns.