RFID Tags – Making Things Talk to Each Other

Automation and digitization of everything has been common speak in the past decade. From cellular phones to smart phones and digital diaries to tablets, the world has seen tremendous change in the past few years. We have productivity apps to make checklists, remind us of important meetings and to share information ten thousand miles away in less than a second. But should this technology be confined to the realms of phones, tablets and PCs? What about the most basic equipment used almost daily in our lives?

Most of us would be able to recall a toothbrush ad showcasing a product that tells you when it needs to be replaced through an analog color indicator. Can you think of some way to automate this?

Of course we can have the barcode and scan it through one of the readers, but not everyone’s going to keep a reader for this purpose. There actually exists a very simple technology of this sort that is ready to be deployed and used at a large scale – a very basic piece of art – RFIDs or Radio Frequency Identification tags.

The RFID technology uses a unique identity that is stored in a small microchip present in it. This means they can easily be used to identify people, objects etc. They can even talk to other tags using radio frequency electromagnetic fields.

Future of RFID Tags

It is not at all hard to imagine how powerful RFID tags can actually be. In the era of the Internet of things, RFIDs can be the agents of complete digitization. They are very cheap to produce and they are pasted on each consumer goods, such as milk bottles, shampoo, laptops etc.

A Passive RFID Tag

Now, if products start coming up with individual tags, then we can have an amazing word in front of us:

1. Providing product information: There could be no need to spend big bucks on printing labels and warranty cards with information about the product and its life. A simple RFID tag can perform all those functions. Ranging from product info to instructions on how to best use it, everything can be coded onto this wonderful chip.
2. Making devices and products communicate with each other: Be it storing groceries in your refrigerator or baking stuff in the oven, these devices could communicate with the RFID tags on the products and make use of that information to set the right kind of temperature or may get the best recipe from the internet for the same. Isn’t it cool.
   
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3. Helping corporations to get customer centric feedback: Corporations using RFID tags will get customer centric feedback about usage, preferences and hence can build better relationships with them by offering the right kind of discounts and after sales services.
4. Fully automated transactions: Say you buy stuff from the supermarket; RFID tags on the products will communicate with your basket and your basket will prepare the bill and will communicate with your smart phone to connect with your bank account to and will pay the bill automatically. No hardcopy bills, no queues and no hassle.
5. Building a whole system of the internet of things: Through systematic use of these RFID tags we can build a whole system of intelligent devices, capable of talking to each other and automating every possible process thereby advancing the human race into the next lane of technology and development.
6. In Driverless car of Google –  Even Google is utilizing the RFID tags in its robotic chauffeur for reference indication. The car can track its location by reading the RFID tags those are present at the patterns printed on the road.  Explore more about the driverless car .

The RFID tag seems to be for the next era of technology, what the transistor was for the information age. It is very promising and holds a lot of potential in changing the way we live. If we take into account the pace at which technology has grown in the past few years, RFID tags are bound to become integral parts of our race in the next decade.