Europe's largest conference
At Europe's largest RFID conference, RFID Europe, in Cambridge UK 30th September - 1 October, the most impressive users, developers and
suppliers of ruggedised and apparel RFID will present their new advances and
view of the future. That includes users of ruggedised and on-metal RFID such
the US Navy, IBM, Container Centralen, Laing O'Rourke, Marshall Aerospace,
Progressive Gaming, the Royal Alexandra Hospital, St Olav's Hospital, the
Academic Medical Centre, the Air Transport Association and Transport for London. Richard Rees, one of the most experienced figures in the area of standards and
system integration will give an overview. He is CEO of gold sponsor Scanology
in the Netherlands which has an enviable reputation for the highest performing
HF RFID systems and more to announce.
Silver sponsors
Silver sponsors include Impinj of the USA, the leading UHF chipmaker, now
leading advances further down the value chain as well, and Omni-ID of the USA
and UK, with a remarkable on-metal capability using special physics to give a
very thin, small footprint, high performance UHF label. Then there is MBBS of
Switzerland, which even puts its specially designed LF tags completely inside
metal objects such as surgeon's tools, that are autoclaved and inside
construction metalwork. It also has ruggedised HF tag systems. Silver sponsor
LEONARD KURZ of Stiftung & Co. KG of Germany has a new HF tag manufacturing
advance and Power ID of Israel, Cambridge based Conductive Inkjet Technologies
and TRAAK Systems from Scotland are silver sponsors this year. Silver sponsor
Sonitor Technologies of the USA & Norway will report its huge success with
ruggedised Real Time Locating Systems in hospitals.
Other recent successes
The bronze sponsors such as Ekahau of Finland with ruggedised RTLS in hospitals,
mining etc., CAEN RFID of Italy and Bemrose Booth of the UK are also promoting new ruggedised, high performance RFID so there is quite a trend here. For
example, this year, CAEN RFID has succeeded in the simultaneous identification
and location of metal products handled inside the Acciai Vender warehouse in Italy. It is a commercial and service centre for stainless steel. Another success this year
has been using UHF ruggedised tags to track trucks in the Safe and Efficient
Cargo project in Italy, sponsored by the Transport Department of Regione Friuli
Venezia Giulia (FVG). It traces the goods flows in the main logistic
infrastructures and automatically manages the relevant documents, such as
docking demands and boarding/landing requests by truck drivers passing through Trieste harbour.
The big picture
IDTechEx and the University of Manchester in the UK will be among those
covering apparel RFID, including the global situation of over 60 suppliers and
over 60 users and the forecasts. There are talks by the European Commission and
the Information Commissioner's office on privacy issues and what to do about
them. Indeed, IDTechEx prides itself on giving digested comprehensive analysis rather than commercials at these events. David Lyon analysing real world
uses of EPCglobal around the world will be another example of this. There will
be an investment summit, optional masterclasses, an exhibition and tours to
local companies.
Source: www.IDTechEx.com
