OVERVIEW

In a decade, the prediction by advocates is that RFID will be pervasive and linked to massive computer networks, enabling benefits such as faster grocery store checkout, medicine chests that prompt users to take their pills, and refrigerators with milk cartons that call for replacement. The positive outlook extends to eliminating counterfeit drugs and entertainment ware, reducing shrinkage to the point where consumers can see a benefit in retail pricing, preventing the theft of cars, achieving rapid and accurate tracing and tracking of vital materiel needed by our war fighters, and tracing the movement of babies and small children to keep them from harm's way.

The movement is already in progress, with more examples appearing weekly. In each of Ford's 50 U.S. auto parts and assembly plants, woven into the superstructure supporting the roofs are a network of antennas that are receiving radio signals from the factory floor and even from outside the plant. As Dale Buss of Automotive Logistics explains, "The signals are being emitted by battery-powered, hand-held RFID pendants .Electronic eye sensors and line workers are signaling that the levels of certain parts are low and must be replenished; a run of vehicles that display the need for rework on a particular body panel are pinging the antenna about where they have been shunted" (Buss 2004, p. 68).

The automaker developed the systems with Santa Clara, California based WhereNet, using active tags that emit their own signals and very accurate location hardware and software, in one...