New RFID Tag Could Mean the End of Bar Codes

The promise of RFID technology for some time now has been held out to retailers to make inventory and customer checkout a breeze. You may remember those "you will" commercials AT&T produced in the 90s that showed customers simply walking out of the supermarket with a basket full of groceries, and they were scanned and billed as they exited. Costs of RFID tags have prohibited the widespread implementation of such systems, as the tags currently still cost from 30-50 cents each to produce.

Researchers from Sunchon National University in Suncheon, South Korea, and Rice University in Houston have built a radio frequency identification tag that can be printed directly onto cereal boxes and potato chip bags. The tag uses ink laced with carbon nanotubes to print electronics on paper or plastic that could instantly transmit information about a cart full of groceries.

The new tag, reported in the March issue of IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, costs about three cents to print, compared to about 50 cents for each silicon-based tag. The team hopes to eventually bring that cost below one cent per tag to make the devices commercially competitive. It can store one bit of information — essentially a 1 or a 0 — in an area about the size of a business card. 

The applications of cheap RFID tags in retailing would be numerous. Stores could keep track of how old each item is, how well products sell based on in-store location, eliminate refund and exchange fraud, conduct fast, accurate store inventories, reduce shoplifting, etc. Consumers with an RFID reader at home could also keep home inventories and keep track of food freshness.
The privacy implications are concerning to many. Current grocery store reward systems already connect store purchases to individual consumers and store this data. RFID tags left active in clothing or other products could allow 'Minority Report' type individualized advertising as tag readers make assumptions about you based on what you wear and what personal electronics you carry. Such concerns have caused organizations such as EPIC to make privacy recommendations to government and industry.
Numerous other uses of cheap RFID technology has the potential to change nearly every aspect of modern life.


[via Wired]


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