Auto-ID Labs

Last updated
Auto-ID Labs
IndustryInternet of Things
Founder Kevin Ashton, David Brock, Daniel Engels, Sanjay Sarma, and Sunny Siu
Key people
Sanjay Sarma and Elgar Fleisch
Website https://www.autoidlabs.org/

The Auto-ID Labs network is a research group in the field of networked radio-frequency identification (RFID) and emerging sensing technologies. The labs consist of seven research universities located on four different continents. These institutions were chosen by the former Auto-ID Center to design the architecture for the Internet of Things together with EPCglobal. [1] [2] The federation was established in 1999; the network they have developed is at the heart of a proposal sponsored by EPCglobal and supported by GS1, GS1 US, Wal-Mart, Hewlett-Packard, and others to use RFID and the Electronic Product Code (EPC) in the identification of items in the supply chain for companies. The areas of expertise range from hardware to software to business research related to RFID.

Contents

History

The Auto-ID Labs is the research-oriented successor to the MIT Auto-ID Center, founded by Kevin Ashton, David Brock, Dr. Daniel Engels, Sanjay Sarma, and Sunny Siu with funding from Procter & Gamble, Gillette, the Uniform Code Council, and a number of other global consumer products manufacturers. The MIT Auto-ID Center was created to develop the Electronic Product Code, a global RFID-based item identification system intended to replace the UPC bar code. In October 2003, the Auto-ID Center was replaced by the newly founded research network, the Auto-ID Labs and EPCGlobal, an organization charged with managing the new EPC Network. Auto-ID Labs is responsible for managing and funding the continued development of EPC technology.

Research topics

The research topics of the labs have gone beyond RFID-only research and now also includes sensor networks and new emerging sensing technology. Basically, the research can be grouped into three main areas: hardware, software and business layer. On the autoidlabs.org website, the Auto-ID Labs continuously publish their research results and provide an archive with over 150 white papers and academic publications.[ citation needed ] The following parts outline how the research is organized.

Software and network

Hardware

Members

The research network consists of the following seven research institutions:

Related Research Articles

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) uses electromagnetic fields to automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. An RFID system consists of a tiny radio transponder, a radio receiver and transmitter. When triggered by an electromagnetic interrogation pulse from a nearby RFID reader device, the tag transmits digital data, usually an identifying inventory number, back to the reader. This number can be used to track inventory goods.

Traceability is the capability to trace something. In some cases, it is interpreted as the ability to verify the history, location, or application of an item by means of documented recorded identification.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic Product Code</span>

The Electronic Product Code (EPC) is designed as a universal identifier that provides a unique identity for every physical object anywhere in the world, for all time. The EPC structure is defined in the EPCglobal Tag Data Standard, which is a freely available standard. The canonical representation of an EPC is a URI, namely the 'pure-identity URI' representation that is intended for use when referring to a specific physical object in communications about EPCs among information systems and business application software.

Automatic identification and data capture (AIDC) refers to the methods of automatically identifying objects, collecting data about them, and entering them directly into computer systems, without human involvement. Technologies typically considered as part of AIDC include QR codes, bar codes, radio frequency identification (RFID), biometrics, magnetic stripes, optical character recognition (OCR), smart cards, and voice recognition. AIDC is also commonly referred to as "Automatic Identification", "Auto-ID" and "Automatic Data Capture".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">José Santana (economist)</span>

José Manuel Santana Silvestre, is a Dominican economist, specialist in Technology and Development. He is the executive director of the Dominican Republic International Commission of Science & Technology with the rank of ambassador. He is also a Research Affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">GS1</span> Organization for barcode standards

GS1 is a not-for-profit, international organization developing and maintaining its own standards for barcodes and the corresponding issue company prefixes. The best known of these standards is the barcode, a symbol printed on products that can be scanned electronically.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tracking system</span>

A tracking system, also known as a locating system, is used for the observing of persons or objects on the move and supplying a timely ordered sequence of location data for further processing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kevin Ashton</span> British technology pioneer

Kevin Ashton is a British technology pioneer who cofounded the Auto-ID Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), which created a global standard system for RFID and other sensors. He is known for coining the term "the Internet of Things" to describe a system where the Internet is connected to the physical world via ubiquitous sensors.

In the distribution and logistics of many types of products, track and trace or tracking and tracing concerns a process of determining the current and past locations of a unique item or property. Mass serialization is the process that manufacturers go through to assign and mark each of their products with a unique identifier such as an Electronic Product Code (EPC) for track and trace purposes. The marking or "tagging" of products is usually completed within the manufacturing process through the use of various combinations of human readable or machine readable technologies such as DataMatrix barcodes or RFID.

Electronic Product Code Information Services (EPCIS) is a global GS1 Standard for creating and sharing visibility event data, both within and across enterprises, to enable users to gain a shared view of physical or digital objects within a relevant business context. "Objects" in the context of EPCIS typically refers to physical objects that are handled in physical steps of an overall business process involving one or more organizations. Examples of such physical objects include trade items (products), logistic units, returnable assets, fixed assets, physical documents, etc. “Objects” may also refer to digital objects which participate in comparable business process steps. Examples of such digital objects include digital trade items, digital documents, and so forth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sanjay Sarma</span> Indian mechanical engineer

Sanjay E. Sarma an Indian mechanical engineer who is the Fred Fort Flowers (1941) and Daniel Fort Flowers (1941) professor of mechanical engineering and the Vice President for Open Learning at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is credited with developing many standards and technologies in the commercial RFID industry. Sarma is co-author of The Inversion Factor: How to Thrive in the IOT Economy, along with Linda Bernardi and the late Kenneth Traub. Sarma also serves on the board of the MOOC provider edX as a representative of MIT.

William Randolph 'Randy' Sweeney is an American research scientist and director for R&D at Altria/Philip Morris USA. After retirement in 2010, Sweeney then founded a consultant group working in the "internet of things", later becoming Chief Engineer for Critical Power Systems Inc, and more recently a technology startup entrepreneur.

Application Level Events (ALE) is a standard created by EPCglobal, an organization of industry leaders devoted to the development of standards for the Electronic Product Code (EPC) and Radio-frequency identification (RFID) technologies and standards. The ALE specification is a software specification indicating required functionality and behavior, as well as a common API expressed through XML Schema Definition (XSD) and Web Services Description Language (WSDL).

Network Centric Product Support (NCPS) is an early application of an Internet of Things (IoT) computer architecture developed to leverage new information technologies and global networks to assist in managing maintenance, support and supply chain of complex products made up of one or more complex systems, such as in a mobile aircraft fleet or fixed location assets such as in building systems. This is accomplished by establishing digital threads connecting the physical deployed subsystem with its design Digital Twins virtual model by embedding intelligence through networked micro-web servers that also function as a computer workstation within each subsystem component (i.e. Engine control unit on an aircraft) or other controller and enabling 2-way communications using existing Internet technologies and communications networks - thus allowing for the extension of a product lifecycle management (PLM) system into a mobile, deployed product at the subsystem level in real time. NCPS can be considered to be the support flip side of Network-centric warfare, as this approach goes beyond traditional logistics and aftermarket support functions by taking a complex adaptive system management approach and integrating field maintenance and logistics in a unified factory and field environment. Its evolution began out of insights gained by CDR Dave Loda (USNR) from Network Centric Warfare-based fleet battle experimentation at the US Naval Warfare Development Command (NWDC) in the late 1990s, who later lead commercial research efforts of NCPS in aviation at United Technologies Corporation. Interaction with the MIT Auto-ID Labs, EPCglobal, the Air Transport Association of America ATA Spec 100/iSpec 2200 and other consortium pioneering the emerging machine to machine Internet of Things (IoT) architecture contributed to the evolution of NCPS.

Peter Harold Cole was an Australian electronic engineer, notable for pioneering research in the area of RFID technology, having held over 30 patents.

A wireless identification and sensing platform (WISP) is an RFID device that supports sensing and computing: a microcontroller powered by radio-frequency energy. That is, like a passive RFID tag, WISP is powered and read by a standard off-the-shelf RFID reader, harvesting the power it uses from the reader's emitted radio signals. To an RFID reader, a WISP is just a normal EPC gen1 or gen2 tag; but inside the WISP, the harvested energy is operating a 16-bit general purpose microcontroller. The microcontroller can perform a variety of computing tasks, including sampling sensors, and reporting that sensor data back to the RFID reader. WISPs have been built with light sensors, temperature sensors, and strain gauges. Some contain accelerometers. WISPs can write to flash and perform cryptographic computations. The WISP was originally developed by Intel Research Seattle, but after their closure development work has continued at the Sensor Systems Laboratory at the University of Washington in Seattle.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steve Bratt</span> American businessman

Steven Richard Bratt has served as Leader of the MITRE Health Standards and Interoperability Group, Chief Technology Officer and President of Standards Development for GS1, chief executive officer of the World Wide Web Foundation and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and in other science and technology positions.

CISC Semiconductor GmbH defines itself as “design and consulting service company for industries developing embedded microelectronic systems with extremely short Time-To-Market cycles.” The company started in 1999, working in the semiconductor industry, but soon expanded its field towards the automotive branch and further extended business towards the radio frequency technology (RFID) sector in 2003. Since then, CISC gained significant experience and expertise in RFID, developing an own business segment and highly sensitive measurement equipment to test and verify RFID systems for different industries. Representatives of CISC Semiconductor are actively working on and contributing to worldwide standardization of future technologies like RFID, in different standardization organizations. This effort brings CISC into the position of being a leader in research and development, and thus being able to be “one step ahead of innovation”. As of 2011 CISC Semiconductor is in a globally leading standardization position for RFID testing by providing the convener of ISO/IEC JTC1 WG4/SG6 on “RFID performance and conformance test methods“, as well as GS1 EPCglobal co-chairs for performance and conformance tests.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ucode system</span>

The ucode system is an identification number system that can be used to identify things in the real world uniquely. Digital information can be associated with objects and places, and the associated information can be retrieved by using ucode.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kilnam Chon</span> South Korean computer scientist (born 1943)

Kilnam Chon (Hangul: 전길남; born 3 January 1943) is a South Korean computer scientist. As a result of his contributions, South Korea became the second country in the world to have the IPv4 network, after the United States.<IEEE Communications Magazine, February 2013>

References

  1. Auto-ID Labs. "Auto-ID Labs. About us". autoidlabs.org. Auto-ID Labs. Archived from the original on 2021-02-19. Retrieved 2021-02-20.
  2. 1 2 "MIT Auto-ID Lab". autoid.mit.edu. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 2021-02-20.
  3. Datta, S. (2017). "Internet of Things Collaborative Research Initiative (ICRI) at MIT Auto-ID Labs". hdl:1721.1/106496.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. "Auto-ID Laboratory at KAIST". autoidlab.kaist.ac.kr. Auto-ID Laboratory at KAIST, Korea. Retrieved 2021-02-20.
  5. "MIT Auto-ID Lab". autoid.mit.edu. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved 2021-02-17.