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These mirrors (some are called MagicMirrors) receive signals from a tag affixed to the hanger or whatever you might have in your hand and help you find matching accessories or outfits.
Technology has advanced to the point where tags on items in stores have a code embedded in them that transmits signals, via radio waves, to a reader that links with a database with all kinds of information.
Some Wisconsin legislators are trying to prevent this technology from infringing on personal privacy before the technology becomes prevalent.
The information received by the reader can be tossed around in a company’s database to send back to you messages about, well, anything. The new technology is supplanting bar coding of items, but up until now, the technology has been used to track inventory while in shipping and distribution channels.
The technology, called radio frequency identification, or RFID, is an emerging product for which business strategists are saying the early birds stand to gain market share for implementing the technology.
RFID has been in use by manufacturers and shippers of all kinds of goods from oil to food as a cost-efficient method of tracking the location of inventory and monitoring shelf life of things like food.
One major retail company, Wal-Mart, mandates all its suppliers use the technology. The Department of Defense also mandates its use by all of its suppliers. But the tags are disabled before the merchandise leaves the store, Wal-Mart officials have been quoted as saying.
The Bush administration has proposed putting an RFID chip in each soldier that would replace the traditional dog tags. In recent years, veterinarians and other animal caregivers have implanted chips to track animals.
The health care and pharmaceutical companies use chips to track drugs and medical supplies, ensuring they are kept in environmentally sensitive locations when indicated, such as organ transplants or blood being kept cold. Mega-stores are putting RFID chips in shopping carts to help shoppers locate items they are looking for without going up and down each aisle.
One Alzheimer’s facility in Florida is implanting RFID chips in 200 volunteers who are clients of the organization in case they wander, get lost, or confused or hurt and wind up in an emergency room. Doctors at the area hospitals would be able to read the chips and know whom to contact as well as the person’s medical history.
A public beach in New Jersey that charges admission provides a wristband to each paying beachcomber. Security then will be able to use a reader from several feet away to locate a chip instead of confronting people to find out if they’ve paid.
Major conferences provide name badges to convention goers that have chips embedded in them. As the visitor travels the exhibitions, readers can detect the chip, sort through the data base of names and know that Ms. Jones is from Wisconsin and has an interest in such and such a subject. A television or computer monitor displays items of interest to that particular person (if she’s still standing within 10 feet or so) or tells her who else at the conference might share that interest.
There are some who believe RFID technology, if it were more widespread, could have saved the produce industry millions of dollars during the spinach contamination crisis and could in the future reduce spoilage of products worldwide.
Retailers are beginning to catch on to new uses for the technology that has saved supply and distribution chains millions of dollars for years. Actually, the new technology is supposed to make shopping easier.
Say you go into a dressing room with a blouse or shirt you want to try on. An RFID tag on the item will signal a receiver placed in the mirror or possibly some other device, route that signal to the store’s inventory of merchandise and project on a screen for you more merchandise that you can pair with the item so that you can see an entire ensemble.
The projection shows possible pairings of clothing, jewelry, shoes, hats, and other accessories in stock. Just touch the screen on the item you like and a signal is sent to the sales staff that goes to the racks to find one in your size and brings it to you.
Sound a little like Big Brother in your dressing room? Read on.
Retailers are also experimenting with customer loyalty RFID tags. Instead of (or in addition to) being attached to retail items, the tag would be embedded on what’s called a loyalty card.
The card’s signal could be read by a store’s receiver as soon as you walk in the door and a personal greeting to you could be flashed on a display board, your coffee might already be in process by the time you get to the counter, your favorite newspaper placed at your favorite seat.
Alternatively, the card could have your purchasing history that allows the staff to be able to customize their suggestions to suit your tastes and automatically credit all your purchases to your checking or credit card account.
One store in Columbus, Ohio, has started experimenting with the technology in order to improve customer relationship management. Upscale stores in other places like Hong Kong and Latin America already provide customers with the ability to shop without having to find a salesperson. Not only can the system inform customers of different ways to mix and match outfits, it can also provide a back story on the item informing them about the history of the garment, where it was made.
This might be valuable information for those concerned their purchases supported sweatshops of low-paid workers. The back-story might be finding out if any celebrities like athletes or entertainers are wearing the same clothes. That would fit into the craze of celebrity endorsements of clothing sought after by millions of consumers.
Retailers are betting this new technology is also attractive to customers who don’t want to be hassled by salespeople, who don’t want to wander around the store looking for a matching blouse or skirt or pants. They say they are also appealing to the need of people to feel they belong who might be made to feel he or she is getting personalized attention and that the store “knows my name.”
Privacy concerns
It’s that detailed knowledge at a personal level that troubles consumer privacy advocates and others. Groups in the United States and around the world are forming to stop the rise in the use of the chips, which some call “spychips.”
The four main privacy concerns are:
In 2006, Wisconsin became the first state to enact legislation prohibiting the placement of RFID tags or chips on persons without their knowledge or consent. On Aug. 14, Wisconsin Rep. Marlin Schneider, D-Wis. Rapids, introduced legislation prohibiting the sale of consumer goods or certain farm products that contain an RFID tag, unless the seller renders the tag inoperable before the purchaser takes possession of the item.
“Where does 1984 start and end?” asked Mike Schoenfeld, legislative aid to Schneider. “We’d rather err on the more conservative in terms of liberty. Structure will come.
“Voluntary chips are fine, Schoenfeld continued. “You just can’t coerce anyone, even child molesters.”
Retailers who have experimented with the technology have seen a 30 percent increase in sales. While the systems are expensive, they are saving companies much more than the investment.
They are also using RFID to manage shoplifting. One cannot leave a store with RFID tags that are still active or it will set off an alarm.
The proposed legislation does not address what to do about merchandise with RFID chips already in consumers’ hands. For example, depending on the manufacturer of a tire, consumers can purchase tires embedded with a chip that can be read by a diagnostic machine at a service shop and indicates to the mechanic the tires need to be replaced or balanced.
Toyota has for years been providing Smart Key/Smart Start devices that contain RFID technology on their vehicles that allows consumers to start their car before getting into it. These starting devices can also be installed by electronics stores like Best Buy.
Dave Griffin, a sales consultant with Steve Lowe’s Toyota in La Crosse said there are no tracking mechanisms on these remote devices. Moreover, a car can’t be started without both the transmitter and receiver. “To gain access via a proximity sensor, the person must be within a couple feet (of the vehicle),” Griffin said.
He also said consumers do not sign any waivers or releases about the technology at this point.
“This would be another piece of legislation that is not needed right now. This would be more paperwork for the consumer,” Griffin said. He did say it would make a difference if retailers attached these devices to clothing and personal items. Then, he said, legislation might make sense.
Are consumers ready for this level of intimacy with their clothing? Retailers believe they are, but the technology for the retail industry is still in its formative state and many trials and errors will occur.
It will probably be like shopping for clothes these days: Lots of trial and error.
RFID history goes back 60 years
By JILL CARLSON | Lee Newspapers
Radio frequency identification dates back to World War II. Radar was discovered in 1935 and was used by Germany, Japan, Great Britain and the United States to warn of approaching planes.
But there wasn’t a way to identify if an approaching plane belonged to an ally or an enemy. The British developed a friend or foe system, placing a transmitter on all of their planes that communicated that the aircraft was friendly.
Throughout the 1950s and ’60s, research in the United States, Japan and Europe helped to advance RFID technology, and companies began selling antitheft systems in retail settings.
In the 1970s, the U.S. Energy Department asked Los Alamos National Laboratory to devise a technique to keep track of nuclear material. The lab also developed an RFID system to track cattle and prevent a farmer or veterinarian from accidentally giving two doses of medicine to one animal.
Types of RFID
There are two types of RFID tags: active and passive. Active tags are powered by an internal battery and are usually read/write capable, meaning that data can be rewritten and/or modified. Active tags, said UW RFID Lab Director Alfonso Gutierrez, cost between $35 and $40 each and are about the size of a cell phone.
Passive tags operate on power generated from the reader, are much lighter than active tags, and have an unlimited life. The drawback is that their read range is not as far as the range for active tags, so the reader must be of a higher intensity to capture information. The passive tags cost only about 15 cents each. “The leash cannot be more expensive than the dog,” Gutierrez said.
Wisconsin connection
In September 2003, a group of potential RFID users, technology developers and UW researchers formed the UW RFID Industry Workgroup, which is part of the UW E-Business Consortium.
More than 40 companies in the group share lessons learned and best practices for RFID strategy and implementation.
Participating Madison area businesses include American Girl, Kraft Foods, Lands’ End, Promega Corporation, Sargento Foods and Sub-Zero Freezer Co. Other participants include Brunswick Corp., 3M, ABC Computers, BEA Systems, Rockwell Automation and Zebra Technologies.
On the agenda at workgroup meetings are results from experiments conducted in the UW RFID Lab in the Engineering Centers Building. Wisconsin-based companies Autologik, Dorner Manufacturing, Rockwell Automation and Red Prairie are founding members of the lab and contributed $500,000 in software to use for research and education.
“The close coupling of the activities at the UW RFID Lab with Wisconsin manufacturers leads to better understanding and potentially wider use of the technology. The manufacturers get an opportunity to experiment with the technology, converse with experts and consider alternatives. We believed in the process enough to contribute a large amount of control equipment and engineering effort to help prime the pump,” said Joe Owen, industry solutions marketing manager in the food and beverage department at Rockwell Automation.
Medical applications
UW Hospital and Clinics uses RFID as part of a patient safety system in the hospital.
“We’ve been using RFID bracelets for patients who are at risk for wandering — those with Alzheimer’s or those who lose their orientation easily, so the unit staff can be alerted by the alarm that sounds if a patient gets to a perimeter door of the unit,” said Ron Brefka, engineering manager at UW Hospital and Clinics.
Sarah Carlson, director of media relations for St. Mary’s Hospital, said that on March 29, the Family Birth Center implemented the Hugs Infant System. Produced by Verichip Corp., the system uses a low-frequency radio ID tag attached around the infant’s ankle. An alarm sounds if someone tries to leave the Family Birth Center with a protected infant without authorization.
BloodCenter of Wisconsin (BCW), based in Milwaukee, is working with UW-Madison’s RFID Lab in an effort to monitor blood and blood products across the entire supply chain, said Rodeina Davis, vice president of information services.
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