GS1 Technology Day: Nano, robots, humanoid reproduction

For the first time the leaders of the GS1 EPCglobal Board of Governors met at ETH Zurich for discussing future directions of RFID and barcode technologies. As part of this meeting, we organized a technology day which featured current develops of our labs associated companies and groups (find presentations and detailed agenda here).
In addition to our own work we could also invite renown keynote speakers from ETH Zurich.
Prof. Dr. Bertram Batlogg talked about recent developments of nano-technology and shared some insights about emerging display technologies.
As part of this program we had also the chance to meet Prof. Dr. Raffaello D’Andrea who motivated his research on controlling robots by sensors by the example of the steam engine controlled by a speed limiter.
Raffaello showed the tremendous developments regarding miniaturization when he compared their most recent quadrocopter with the table-sized model of a decade ago.
However, during his robot air-show the title of his talk "Controlling the artificial" become even clearer: Raefaello showed his trust into his technologies when he took a seat in his Flying Machine Arena and his students started the show, sometimes closely above his head.

In the first demo our visitors could control the helicopter with a stick by gestures. The system ensured that the helicopters did not collide with the walls or crash down because of too hectic movements. Other demos showed the ability of balancing a standing stick on the helicopter, coordinated movements of groups, kinect gesture control and the famous ball juggling (see here). Thus, this demonstration made me confident about getting the next doener delivered by drone pretty soon....
Finally, Prof. Dr. Markus Gross talked about how to visually reproduce the real-world based on special effects in several animation movies. He reported about the ability of 3D-scanning of still faces and reproducing movements with 7 artificial muscles in contrast to the natural 35 muscles. His prophecy was that in about a five year's time horizon simulated face-movements would be indistinguishable from the real. Thus, Holywood stars would already start protecting the rights on the visual appearance of their bodies, as movements can be done by the computers later rather easily and more cost-efficient.
In the second part of his talk Prof. Gross talked about humanoid robots that would mimic actors in amusements parks. Based on 3D scans and 3D printing faces can be modeled quickly. As a commercialization of this technology he showed customized barbie puppets carrying faces of the corresponding children. Technological progress sometimes can be fascinating and scary...

Research of the Auto-ID Labs presented at GS1 event

As part of their research for GS1, members of the Auto-ID Labs research network give regular updates about their applied research in the areas of RFID technology & performance, consumer services and future trends of auto-id technologies.

The most recent update (overview) was provided at GS1's Industry and Standards Event in Brooklyn, March 2011.

Ed Schuster from MIT presented (slides) recent work about using RFID together with polymer material as powerless sensors to measure temperature and strain of bridges. As such, the safety of the material of bridges could be continuously measured and fed directly to the
EPCglobal Architecture Framework.

Jin Mitsugi from the Keio Lab reported (slides) about how to improve the lifecycle management of electric appliances in the home. As the EPC has been established in supply-chains but the consumers in the homes are missing the ability to read and write information to these RFID tags, Mitsugi presented a dual interface passive RFID tag: it incorporates the standards UHF Gen 2 interface for standards RFID readers and it additionally features a basedband interface to the tag's memory which can the linked to ZigBee/WLAN or any other appropriate connection being available in the home. Thus, a system can be build to manage the lifecycle of appliances also beyond the point of sales in people's homes.

Myself I had the chance to discuss (slides) the increasing popularity of shopping apps and the importance of barcode scanning in retail. As part of this research I disclosed first results of our analysis concerning barcode data inconsistencies. Triggered by GS1's Data Crunch report [1], we investigated the responses to 220.000 barcode queries triggered by users of two productive mobile apps. We compared the responses of different information providers and could reveal missing information (37% of the queries), wrong information and inconsistent information (spelling, multiple names for single barcodes).
The analysis is still on-going and will be summarized in an upcoming publication and whitepaper.
One approach might also be to position GS1 as the authorative source for barcode information.

Finally, Mark Harrison reported (slides) about recent projects in aerospace, lifecycle management, and event-based pedigreee for healthcare.
For details see also here.

Overall, it has been a very helpful discussion about future research directions of the Auto-ID Labs. It was good to see that the academic perspective of the labs and the business-focussed view of GS1 and members has many topics in common: consumers services, quality of barcode master data and the provision of GS1 master to consumer apps. The labs are looking forward to support GS1 in becoming the trusted source of master data for barcode consumer apps.

Visiting Manhattan, first, I was surprised about the crazy weather and, second, about IMHO a really complicated queuing system at the check-out of Whole Foods: customers are queueing in six lines, each assigned with a color. Then both screen display and audio announcement advice the customers in the pole positions of their lines to approach to a specific checkout identified by a number, run!,...


[1] GS1 UK: V.C., Data crunch report: The impact of bad data on profits and customer service in the UK grocery industry, 2009.

At the GS1 Marketplace

Just two weeks ago Stephan Karpischek and I did another trip to Brussels in order to present My2Cents at the GS1 Global Forum. Among all the supply-chain applications GS1 has initially started it was really refreshing to see the several mobile applications coming up that enable also small retailers to retrieve information about the issuing authority of barcodes, e.g. using Mobile GEPIR. With My2Cents we even went a step further showing how actually consumers themselves can add comments about products and can retrieve the impressions and opinions of others. Obviously, the herb bouilons (only available in Switzerland) we've chosen as sample product for commenting have raised so much interest that some of them have disappeared after our demonstration...

Auto-ID Labs Meeting @ GSMP & JAG in LA

I'm just caming back from our half-yearly Auto-ID Labs meeting. It's always great meeting the colleagues from the other labs, exchanging ideas, getting new insights into on-going work, and to consolidate the overall labs' strategy as such.
Then it was also fun presenting research results not only among us but also to key staff from EPCglobal, GS1 and end-user companies. It seems that we have inspired our audience, as I found this piece of "user-generated content" (to the right) on one of the tables after the meeting - maybe we should investigate how these art could be used as an implicit ratings of meetings...

You find an overview of on-going research and presentations here.