Will RFID-Guided Robots Rule the World?
From: CNet - 07/08/2005
By: Alorie Gilbert

From factories to playgrounds, researchers are envisioning an ever-increasing
array of applications for radio frequency identification (RFID) technologies:
Secom has developed a robot that monitors children at play and sends a
warning to a control center if a child wanders off or a stranger approaches.
Other uses for robots endowed with sensory perception include monitoring
factories and aiding with the care of the elderly or disabled, with potential
applications in almost any other arena, including libraries, prisons, retail
stores, and airports. A central impediment to the universal adoption of this
technology is that any device with an RFID reader will only be able to detect
another object if it carries an RFID tag as well. RFID tags, which require no
power to transmit their unique serial number through a radio antenna and a
microchip, are expected to emerge as a $2.8 billion market by 2009, compared
to the $300 million in revenue posted worldwide in 2004. In the meantime, the
cost of an individual tag prohibits wide-scale consumer applications, as tags
currently run from 15 cents up to $100. As a result, much of the RFID
activity appears in warehouses and factories, where companies such as
Wal-Mart have sunk large investments in RFID technology to streamline
shipping and production. Robotics remains on the distant horizon, however, as
its technology has yet to catch up with its potential; insufficient advances
in indoor location tracking and other expensive complexities so far inherent
in free-wheeling robots have kept robotics effectively out of the commercial
sphere. "Robotics is something I've always been fascinated by; it's got huge
promise," said HP's Vijaykumar Pradhan. "But robots are not the solution to
every problem. A simpler solution is the preferred one."  

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