RFID Can Track Rings, Roosters

When people think of radio-frequency identification, they often think of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. The world’s largest retailer is requiring its primary vendors to use RFID tags on crates and pallets shipped to Wal-Mart distribution centers.

But people often don’t know about the other applications of RFID technology.

RFID tags can be used to track expensive hospital inventory (such as heart pumps and wheelchairs), monitor the temperature of chicken shipped to stores and provide some insight on the sex life of roosters.

Researchers at IntelliMark’s Springdale office have been working on a variety of RFID projects, including those mentioned above.

“RFID is new enough that most of what we’re doing are pilots,” said Larry Waller, a sales representative for IntelliMark Inc.

According to IntelliMark’s Web site, the company has implemented 11 RFID pilot programs for Fortune 100 companies and deployed 1,200 RFID readers in a production environment. IntelliMark installs more than 350 million SF of radio-frequency coverage every year.

Some hospitals are already using RFID tags to track inventory via computer, Waller said. IntelliMark is doing research on tags that can monitor heat or movement, so hospitals would be able to tell if a patient is in any given wheelchair at a particular moment.

Waller said a poultry company contacted IntelliMark because truck drivers were apparently turning the air conditioning off in the trailers to save money on fuel while delivering chicken to stores. A couple of hours before they got to the store, the drivers would turn the AC back on. But by that time, the meat had lost some of its freshness. RFID tags that monitor temperature could tell the poultry company how hot the chicken got en route to the store, Waller said.

Roosters and Cows

Phil Maynard, a new technology developer at IntelliMark, has been working on a project he calls “Cocktracker.” Maynard believes RFID tags could be attached to roosters to make sure they’re circulating throughout the chicken house. If a rooster isn’t breeding with enough hens, he could be evicted and replaced with another rooster.

“You talk about the pedigree line, at the very high end, it’s important to know they’re getting the job done,” Maynard said.

If that’s not enough to crow about, Maynard said RFID will soon be able to track cattle much more efficiently. For the past couple of years, RFID ear tags have been used to tell what farm a particular cow came from. But soon, those tags will also be able to track cattle from birth to slaughter, telling every place the cow has been along the way — farms, sale barns, transport trailers. The tags will also be able to tell what other cattle it came in contact with. That would make it much easier to track cattle in the event of a disease outbreak. It’s all part of a uniform national database — the National Farm Animal Identification and Records program — being compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Kids and Athletes

For the past couple of years, IntelliMark has been helping race organizers in Northwest Arkansas use RFID tags for safety and tracking purposes.

In 2004, IntelliMark came up with a way to use RFID tags under swim caps to help track swimmers at the Peace at Home Open Water Swim at Beaver Lake. With the RFID technology, the Project for Victims of Family Violence needed only two volunteers to track the swimmers instead of 15, which was the case in 2003. Also, the amount of time it took to tabulate race results was cut from hours to minutes.

IntelliMark also used RFID tags under bicycle seats to help organizers track riders in the Har-Ber Meadows Criterium, a bicycle race held in Springdale.

The open-water swim on Beaver Lake included one-half-, one- and two-mile races.

“They’re going to be out there in the water for an hour swimming,” Waller said.

In a race of that length, a swimmer could drown and others might not notice.

The RFID tag would tell race organizers if a particular swimmer actually got in the water and got out after the race.

Besides athletes, RFID tags are also useful to help track workers and children.

A mining company contacted IntelliMark about using RFID tags inside miner’s helmets to make sure they come out of the mines at the end of the shift.

“This system will be helping you count in the background and determine who went down there and who came back,” Waller said.

Schools in Japan are using RFID to make sure students get to school. When they pass through a portal at the door, an e-mail is automatically sent to the parents telling them their child arrived safely at school.

Assets and Manufacturing

Waller said RFID is important to jewelry stores for asset tracking and security. If a $10,000 ring doesn’t make it back into the safe at the end of the day, the RFID system lets employees know it’s not there.

One problem with the jewelry stores, though, is that store owners want small tags so they don’t detract from the appearance of the jewelry. Small tags have smaller antennas, which normally can transmit only a couple of feet away. So an RFID system could tell employees that a ring had been removed from a shelf, and another RFID portal at the door could be used to tell when the ring left the building.

Passive tags (which don’t have their own batteries) cost as little as 10 cents each in bulk but can transmit only up to about 20 feet away. Active tags (which have a built-in battery) can transmit much farther, last up to five years but cost between $50 and $75. They can be programmed to send out a pulse at regular intervals, such as every five seconds or every hour.

“The nice thing with active,” Waller said, “is you can do more real-time location systems [such as hospital inventory tracking].”

Waller said IntelliMark has been working with polymers and resins to coat RFID tags on manufacturing molds so they can withstand heat of 260 degrees. In that case, the tags could help employees pair up molds that vary by millimeters in size.

A handheld RFID detector could be used like a Geiger counter. When pointed at a stack of 500 molds, a beep would alert the worker to the proximity of a particular mold.

Waller said IntelliMark has also done RFID work to assist the U.S. Department of Defense with asset tracking, but he couldn’t give details because of homeland security issues.

IntelliMark

Waller said the Springdale office of IntelliMark is working more with RFID than the company’s other offices because of its proximity to businesses in the area that could benefit from the technology.

At this point, RFID research is a small amount of what the information technology company does, but that sector is likely to grow as more industries begin to use RFID.

Waller said many companies that set out to do only RFID work have already folded because “it’s too early.”

He said the technology provides an obvious return on investment for some businesses, though.

In early December, IntelliMark Holdings Inc. of Little Rock bought Impact Innovations Group of Dallas, a private IT outsourcing and technical staffing company, and will rename itself Technisource Inc.

The new firm has about 3,000 people in 35 offices and annual revenue of about $300 million.

The companies didn’t reveal a purchase price.

IntelliMark Holdings already owned IntelliMark and Technisource Inc., a national provider of IT and technical engineering consultants.