The parallel sessions were divided in 3 tracks: 2 for market drive and 1 for technology innovation. I chose to attend the technology track. The first session from this track was chaired by Fernando Videira from Vodafone and the second was chaired by Luís Magalhães from UMIC.
The first speaker of the session was Anthony Furness from AIM-UK with "RFID a blessing or curse for SMEs?". First, Mr. Furness stated the importance of SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises - micro < style="font-weight: bold;">Michahelles from ETH Zurich who talked about "Opportunities for fighting counterfeit products". These products span multiple categories - auto-parts, pharmaceutical, aeroplane-parts, luxury goods - and currently account for 2% of international trade (USD 176M). 2/3 are produced in China. The goal of fighting counterfeit is to increase the risk profile of counterfeit players and destroy their business model. RFID technology is promising in this aspect as it gives each item a name and allows it to be tracked through the licit distribution channels. The approaches under study are: unique serial numbering, track-and-trace plausability checks (e.g. same item seen at the same time in two places), smarter tags (e.g. tamper-evident) and reliance on object specific features (e.g. like in Euro bills). Mr. Michahelles mentioned the SToP and BRIDGE projects, funded by the EU, who contribute to this fight. One of the ideas is to empower the end-user to give feedback when spotting counterfeit products. This approach is interesting, but can't be applied for all products, as sometimes consumers are not allies to providers, as they benefit from prestigious products at low prices.Next was a presentation by Kaj Nummila from VTT about the Indisputable Key project, that deals with tracking in the forest industry: from forest to wood use (excluding paper production). They develop different kinds of tags and readers for different uses (e.g. live tree tagging). At the architecture level, they leverage the GS1 RFID and barcode standards and use a publish-subscribe event bus with papiNET and Stanford messaging technologies.
The following speaker was Alexander Zeier from Hasso Plattner Institute in Germany, who is sponsored by SAP. The talk was about "Integrating RFID data in Enterprise Business Systems". The overall idea is that better quality data can lead to better decisions. RFID enables Real World Awareness (RWA) in business processes: the ability to sense, connect, respond. This can increase automation, improve information and processes, and finally, bring business innovation. Real world examples are: smart supermarket shelves, aircraft preventive maintenance and air-ducts maintenance. However, this also brings a data avalanche e.g. according to estimates, if Walmart used item level tagging then 7 TeraBytes of data would be generated every hour. The new proposed paradigm is management by exception and insight: understanding context through a personalized dashboard; gaining insight through an analysis console; taking action through control console.
The final presentation of the session was made by Jason Burke from SAS, a pharmaceutical company. The title was "Right drug, right dose, right patient". SAS aims to tackle the medical errors problem, as it is estimated to cause more deaths than breast cancer and AIDS. So RFID for e-Pedigree (tracking) ensures the right drug is administered. For risk mitigation strategies, Mr. Bruke presented some recommendations: select appropriate technology to assure privacy; be transparent regarding RFID practices to consumers and patients; allow opt-out choices for personal information; engage consortiums of health providers to follow best practices; educate providers and patients. Finally, regarding governance models, Mr. Burke says they should focus on sensitive information without constraining innovation.
Parallel sessions - Track 2 - Technology Innovation - Future paths for innovation
The first speaker of the session was Klaus Rischmuller from ST Electronics, France. He made an excellent overview presentation of tag electronics: "Developing chips and solutions in a complex environment". The laws dictating tag evolution are: Standards (GS1, ISO), Moore's law (microelectronics), Hertz (antennas can't get much smaller than they are now) and Joule's law (limited computing with very limited energy). Tags can be more than just IDs: they can tell a "story". For this, the initial identity should be stored permanently but there should be code, protocol and data for the "story" part. There are four classes of RFID applications: 1 - simple, cheap labels; 2 - large rewritable memory with security; 3 - battery assisted; 4 - sensor and additional processing.
The next presentation was by Werner John from IZN Fraunhofer, Germany, about "Requirements of common european platform for complex RFID applications". He presented a RFID case-study at Deutsche Post. The main idea is of tags having a display with a visual representation of their internal state, readable by humans. This display is very interesting for system migration, evolution and as a fallback procedures when electronic reading is not possible. At the end of his presentation, Mr. John stressed the need for a RFID engineer certification, i.e. people with the right skills mix to develop and implement RFID-based systems.
The next presentation was by Gerd Wolfram from CERP (and from Metro Group). The title was a "Future roadmap for research projects". Mr. Wolfram presented CERP's RFID reference model that structures and describes the different RFID application areas. It is CERP's view that the application determines the technology. So within each application field, CERP work groups performed: state-of-the-art survey, vision statement, gap analysis and identified research needs. The results are 20 major research needs classified in three categories: urgent (1-3 years), mid-term (3-5 years) and long-term (> 5 years). CERP's RFID reference model is a good starting point for any RFID solutions overview and is freely accessible at their web site.
The final presentation was by Ovidiu Vermesan from SINTEF in Norway. The title was "Smart systems on tags" and presented a technology roadmap towards ubiquitous systems: from simple but extensible protocols to more complex protocols. He presented Intellisense RFID, a project that aims to abstract tag type and reader type using multi-frequency antennas, to overcome the current fragmentation of RFID technologies and to achieve unified systems. Tags have a "personality": they sense, actuate, identify, interact, interface and communicate. Their technical features are: small size, ultra low power, low cost, invisible, and autonomous. The approaches to the overall system can be: centralized (EPC-like), decentralized (smart-tag-centered) or something in between, to achieve a more efficient network infrastructure. Finally, Mr. Vermesan presented a very thorough challenges list: environment independent tags (metal, liquids); smart tag networking (tag-2-tag); advanced power supplies (fuel cells, polymer batteries); real-time localization and tracking; data security (energy efficient encryption technology); higher frequencies (enhanced positioning resolution, smaller antennas, compact mobile readers); low power, large capacity memories; communication protocols technologies (low power, bandwidth efficiency); printable electronics (polymer electronics). In the questions and answers, Mr. Vermesan mentioned his opinion that the mobile phone with integrated reader can be an entry point from the ad-hoc network into the wireless network. One final note: this presentation had very good figures, that elegantly conveyed the ideas.
Day two
(to be continued)
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