One argument for RFID sometimes is that because it does not require line-of-sight the ID's would not disturb the visual appearance of products. However, I found some examples which follow the opposite approach: make the barcode part of the design: [1] http://www.barcoderevolution.com [2] http://www.artlebedev.com
An article [1] just pointed me to the fact that the vision of the Internet of Things is about ten years old now, after early work has started at Auto-ID Center at MIT. This was my trigger to search for current papers describing and discussing the Internet of Things. A rather critical articel, [1], proposes to envision the Internet of Things as a hierarchy of objects with different capabilities instead of a network of fully peer connected items, as layed out in the early days of the Auto-ID Center [2]. In order to develop robust business cases, these heterogeneous requirements (tagging of strawberries, cheap items with short life-time, is different from cars with changing configurations) of objects have to be tackled with different technologies, e.g. barcode/RFID/sensor-networks. This is a reasonable argument against building an Internet of Things only RFID, RFID should be part of it, but others, barcode, as well.
Finally, I found a master thesis describing an art project about collecting and sharing stories about objects [3], which the authors calls an internet for things. It's probably not the killer-application but could be a nice consumer gadget for the EPCglobal architecture.
An interesting (but weired;) article is [4], where Rob Kranenburg (btw - the supervisor of [3]) argues for a society that should be in control of the (ubicomp) surveillance technologies it develops. The article is a little bit copious but provides nice arguments for why consumers should be empowered to play a mature role in an Internet of Things.
Just before christmas a new toy has arrived, the rovio robot. It really does look frightning (though the developers designed it to let hard working parents remotely communicate with their kids at home...)
Actually, it's not really a robot it's rather a remote controlled toy. The rather limited autonomous features, such as 'go home to base' or 'follow path' do not work that well (see also reviews at amazon). However, it's funny to walk through a shared office space late at night spying on who's still there. The exciting part also is, that the other one doesn't see who's currently controlling the robot (showing it could also be a nice feature though). You really start immersing into the robot while controlling it through the web-interface. You learn the dimensions of the robot know what you can pass and what you can't. Navigation in the dark is rather poor, but luckily we our office lights react on motion. Another exciting part are colleagues the get annoyed and carry the robot away (which corresponds to 'tele-porting' in computer games) and you have to find your way back again to the base station - hopefully, before rovio runs out of battery. Despite it's limited functionality and it's current flaws Rovio is really fun.
If you are an application designer concerned about which interaction modality (barcode/epc/nfc) consumers could favor most, have a look at this study we've just conducted lately:
It has been propagated for long: smart things, disappearing computers, ubiquitous computing, wearable computing, pervasive computing, ambient intelligence, internet of things - various terms viewing from different the very same phenomenon - things are now longer just thingsm but have virtual counterparts that expand their original capabilities. It has been a nice vision, which is becoming deployed now: apple has come up with iTunes, originally only selling music, but today also selling software, Google has started something similar with Android, and Nokia has started promoting their Ovi. The economist has come up with two nice articles discussing this phenomenon in greater detail.
Today when I watching my colleague Thorsten playing with our Wii station I suddenly could observe how real-world experience can interplay with virtual feedback:
So what`s really the difference between doing sports and playing a computer game triggered through the very physical interactio? Besides the fascination about something new, it`s certainly safety, fun, and the possibility of trying something new. Real boxers will laugh about WII, but newbies get motivated to try movements they would have never done otherwise [1]. Assuming that the virtual experience might become better, the virtual characters on WII still look clumsy to me, the difference between boxing and Wii might become obsolete. Does that mean once we can acquire the same amount of information by our senses stemming from feedback systems as in the real-world, real-world activity and simulated activities in virtual worlds become the same? Does the equation total feedback = physical activity hold? What (apart from nutrition and excretion) does still stop us from moving our lives completely to virtual worlds where we can strip off our physical limitations? At least it looks really funny watching people being engaged in virtual worlds...it looks like plain activity without context [2] - and we are getting closer to the The Lawnmower Man:
As part of the RFID courses I have been giving together with Matthias Lampe for the European EPC Competence Center (EECC) for some years now I finally had the chance to visit Metro's new Future Store in Tönisvorst. First of all, it's a brand new hypermarket huge in size with wide alleys which makes the market quite appealing even without the 'future' label. What attracts media and what probably is most appealing are a couple of gadgets:
a digital advertising column built of a rotating line of led's
a self-checkout for customer's reading the barcode with their mobile phones (as nowhere mentioned: which by the way was developed by Robert Adelmann of ETH)
download of the 'supermarket' ringtone via bluetooth (I wonder who will ever do that, but I might be wrong;)
the 'multi-component' menue - works without technology, based on color codes, one can easily 'customize' meals based certain side-dishes and main courses - the color code helps for achieving 'compatibility'... I can imagine that as quite successfull.
the 'sound shower' removes the need of putting on heads when listening to CD's since the sound is directed only to the user standing under the shower. It's a quite fascinating experience. Just imagine what you could do when covering the entire ceiling with tiles of that system and combining it with indoor localization...unobtrusive whispering anytime anywhere.
then there is the wine testing, operated through supermarket's member card. Looks nice and works well.
the make-up machine gives suggestions on products by virtual make-up: user's photo get's overlayed with the make-up effects.
the skin machine evaluates the user's fat in the skin and recommends products. Well...without a guided tour, I probably would not have spent attention to that machine...
then, there is the check-out which I have seen in operation in the US already years ago. It works but at least currently there are plenty of human 'helpers' in place.
Finally, I could see the first 'kill-tag' machine. It works but 'interestingly, since May 2008 only five users have ever killed tags' mentioned our guide proudly and deriving from that that users wouldn't care about RFID anymore. But why should they if in the current store not even a single product is tagged with RFID!?
Overall, it was a nice visit - just it had nothing to do with RFID as it was our course visitors' and ourselves' expectation... Finally, the famous robot did not work either;(
