21-09-2008, 11:34 PM
Long checkout lines at the grocery store are one of the biggest complaints about the shopping experience. This is mainly due to the time consuming use of UPC barcodes. These codes act as product fingerprints made of machine-readable parallel bars that store binary data.
Created in 1970s to speed up the checkout process, barcodes have certain disadvantages:
It is a read-only technology, which means it cannot send information.
It can easily be forged.
Barcode scanning is time consuming.
To overcome these, the barcodes are being replaced by smart labels, also called radiofrequency identification tags.RFID tags are intelligent barcodes that can literally talk to a networked system to track every product that is bought. The automotive industry also makes use of RFID batteryless transponders that offer a high level of security at low cost. The theft of vehicles with electronic immobilizers decreased to about one-tenth compared to those without immobilizers. This is based on the RFID technology.RFID is a technology that uses radio signals for automatic identification by transmitting data in a machine-readable form using radiofrequency as the carrier medium.
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